


Supernova

by shewhotalkstohyacinths



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Adam is a lamb, Aspergers Syndrome, Crime, Nigel is a loaded gun, Sweetness, Threatening behavior, Understanding, kidnap, things will all work out fine, volatile Nigel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3562424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhotalkstohyacinths/pseuds/shewhotalkstohyacinths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam witnesses NIgel's crew committing a crime. They're forced to take him with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Taking

Fic Prompt: Adam is taken by Nigel’s crew after being a witness to one of their crimes. Nigel takes a shine to him.

(*)

Nigel didn't expect him to be so vulnerable. 

The ‘witness’, upon first glance, doesn't seem all there, as if he's walking another axis somewhere, dancing to another tune. He's been in the safe house for an hour and a half and Nigel has only just arrived to ‘see to him’. He had hoped that his delegates could've dealt with a small job without his input but if you want something doing properly then you might as well do it yourself. Nigel's trust after years in this volatile business, is fragile at best.

The first rule in this game is to leave as little witnesses as possible. His crew called in the mistake the minute it happened. All had gone well with the 'extraction' and the end game had been achieved with a silent bullet in the back of a man's skull.

But, somebody had seen. 

A pair of eyes had committed the crime to memory leaving no other option but to act. 

Nigel's disapproval is fiercely evident by the way he slams through the door. Any man with any sense would be cowering internally at the thought of what he is capable of in this frame of mind. His guys do. They flutter around in a septic panic trying to pull themselves together. 

The captive, however, doesn't even look up. 

The only evidence he's even awake is the rhythmic tap of his foot against the concrete.

(*)

"I'm sorry, Nigel. This wasn't supposed to happen."

They're always so sorry. Apologies feel empty when the same mistakes keep happening again and again and again. For Nigel, an apology is, at base level, an opportunity to learn.

"He appeared out of nowhere. We didn’t even see him.”

"No eyes on us, Ortega. No loose ends. Didn't I make that clear?"

He shouldn't have had to. 

"We didn't expect anyone to be hiding in the fucking alleyway, did we? It looked clear. We made sure."

"Evidently, not sure enough."

"He was sitting on the God damned floor, Nigel. Who does that?"

Ortega, a Hispanic who Nigel picked up along the way, is his unconventional right hand man. When Nigel learned that he could not trust his compatriots, he opted for something else. New associates, handpicked, vetted until they literally bled. Ortega is chaotic and impulsive, often weak-minded and, in a lot of ways, a liability. Regardless, Nigel knows full well that the guy would never betray him like others have and that kind of faith and loyalty is so rare one has to grab it with both hands when it presents itself. He trusts the man with his life. 

He just doesn't trust him with the lives of others. 

"You had one job, kid. One. Job."

"And, we did it. Mario had the car, I had the man. We finished him off before he even had the chance to speak. There was just...a catch."

"A catch."

"Right."

A catch. A problem. 

A living, breathing mistake that Nigel will be forced to rectify himself. 

(*)

Nigel was born with a barbed tongue. 

His nerve endings are static energy and he has blades for a personality. He is sharpness personified and his violent reactions are as rhythmic and reflex as a knee jerk. He can compartmentalise and justify like no one else.

This should be a formality. 

He rears himself up in front of the guy - a kid, really, 25 at best and still dressed in his Sunday specials, though they are dishevelled from heavy handling. He takes a step forward looking to crowd him, to terrify him with this threatening invasion of his personal space. 

It's normally enough to earn their compliance. 

Their first word is usually "please."

The young man does nothing, says nothing, as if he's not reading the vivid tale that Nigel's body language is telling him. It's strange. It's infuriating. 

"Look at me," Nigel demands, calm first but more forcefully when his victim does not respond. Finally, the kid looks up, soft blue eyes focusing on a spot just above Nigel's hairline and there's something profound in the expression on his face, as if this simple, loaded request is the most difficult thing in the world to him. He looks completely lost and far, far too young.  


"Jesus Christ.”

This *should* be a formality...so why is the aggressor disarmed?

The ugly spectre that rises up so readily retreats with its tail between his legs the minute Nigel looks at this kid’s face. 

"There's something wrong with him, I swear," Ortega says. "The minute I pointed the gun at him he started giving me it's fucking production stats. Reeling 'em off like some kind of voiceover. It was batshit, honest to God it was."  


"Was it really?”  


"Yeah". 

As far as an alternative to begging for one's life, it's an interesting one.

(*)

Nigel watches him for a short while just out of curiosity. Sometimes he feels he owes them that, the gesture of leaving life at the hands of someone who at least acknowledged their existence. He might be wildly unstable from the outside but he's not a man that doesn't acknowledge the human need for recognition. The one thing he's always been able to give those who stood in his way was the gift of not dying alone. 

He's never quite met a victim like this one before and in this line of work, deviation from the norm is both a blessing and a curse. He doesn't cry. He doesn't thrash and swear. There is no bravado to speak of and there's not a lot going on behind his eyes. 

There is very little but at the same time there's so very much that Nigel cannot understand.

The young man is perfectly silent, but for the tapping of his foot against the floor and the equal, measured breathing that he seems to be keeping focus upon. Since the moment Nigel arrived, he has not looked him in the eye. 

Nigel gets the impression it has nothing to do with fear or respect, as is customary in his line of work. 

He leans closer to the man to test the water. Nothing happens, until he moves as if to touch him. 

The guy seems to fold in on himself at that. 

"Don't say much, do you?"

The captive's eyes dart to Ortega then back to Nigel. He looks desperately uncomfortable, as if caught between a rock and a hard place. He bites his lip hard then blinks harder. His body jerks a little with the pressure of what's inside of him. The small sound that comes from his throat sounds a lot like frustration. It's desperate and uncomfortable. The tapping becomes so frantic it's a wonder he hasn't burrowed through the floor.

Perhaps that's what he wants. For the ground to open up, to take him away. 

"According to my friend, here, you've got a lot to say. What happened? Did a cat run away with your tongue? It's okay. You can tell me."

When he finally speaks it's a rush of words, like water finally breaking through the confines of a dam. 

"They warned me not to say another word unless they said I could, so I didn't.”

He eyes Nigel’s guys accusingly.

"I didn't want anything on my mouth."

Nigel looks to his associate for clarification, though he knows where it's going.

"I taped him up but he started hyperventilating. I thought he was going to pass out. He wouldn't shut the fuck up, boss. He was going to get us made so I had to get the message across to him."

"He had a gun to my head. It was a Colt M1911. It's the oldest serving handgun in the US. And it was touching my left temple."

"You see?" Ortega says, exasperated. 

It's no wonder the guy had been frightened to open his mouth. Not only has he been wrenched from the street, he's also been threatened. For a common citizen that can be a terrifying thing. Even a man like Nigel knows that. 

"He told me if I didn't say a word he wouldn't shoot me. I didn't want to be shot. Survival would be highly unlikely at point blank range. The trajectory of the bullet would've meant instant death."

That he took Ortega's words so very literally might amuse Nigel on some occasions. 

It just makes him feel uneasy tonight. 

"You have my explicit permission to talk freely now, friend, no need for silence. In fact, you can disregard everything my associate said. I'm the one in charge here and he'll do nothing unless I order him to."

"Oh. O-okay. You're wearing a suit. That makes sense."

"I am indeed. And, yes, it does. Now, shall we get better acquainted?"

In a gesture intended to pacify, Nigel puts a hand on his captive's shoulder. He flinches so hard he almost dislocates it, yelps in unmistakable fear. 

As pitiful as it is, at least it's familiar territory for Nigel. Fear. It's something he can work with. 

"It's okay. Relax. Alright? Get yourself comfortable. I'm not going to hurt you right now."

The man nods his head, breathing hard, before reaching up to touch his clothing. It seems like a move beyond his control, like he's cataloguing himself without thinking. He scrambles for purchase on the fabric and pulls at it. At first, Nigel thinks he's got the wrong impression, that he's going to offer something stupid like his body for his life but it seems that he's fixing his clothing, not removing it. 

He seems satisfied by what he finds because, when he reaches the top of his shirt, he nods his head as if he's proven himself right. 

"I lost a button. It's in here somewhere. I know my shirt was fastened when I got here. The button was definitely there."

"I'm sure we can find it later. Don't worry about it."

"I can sew it back on later if it's not torn. This is my favourite shirt."

"It is?"

He nods his head vigorously. 

"Yes."

The way he struggles to do up his unfastened shirt reminds Nigel of a little boy being hurried out of the front door in time for school. His fingers are shaking so hard he can barely grasp the fabric and his dexterity seems remedial at best. 

Nigel almost feels sorry him.

Almost.

When he's done, he puts his hands back into his lap and rests them there. Still. Quiet. 

"That better?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Good. That's good."

(*)

Nigel hates it when his crew put him in this situation, that of having to take an innocent life. He's a firm believer in an eye for an eye and there are six dead 'associates' this year alone, all of them having crossed him or cost him something. 

If a hapless victim dies then, in order to balance the scales, so does the idiot who made the mistake. 

Nigel doesn't want to have to kill Ortega, he’s a good kid - but, equally, there's something holding him back over the idea of taking a gun to this young man's head. The only options open to him are extortion, intimidation or murder and, while he’s not averse to killing and never has been he's become a little more choosy as he matured. He’d rather there be a valid reason for it. 

There's no valid reason to kill this man and it would be a shame if his hand was forced. 

The kid glances down at his shirtsleeves and he looks distraught. 

"There's blood on my shirt."

"Don't worry about that."

"I think it's from my nose. I don't have any cornstarch or bleach at home. Blood is made of water and plasma. It really stains."

Ortega's brother Mario has roughed the guy up a little, that much is clear. He’s older, not exactly wiser. He’s a hot-head who can't control his temper. The reason is organic. Medical. He hit his head in a motorcycle accident nine months ago and, ever since then, he’s struggled to keep his rage in check. Nigel has wondered on more than one occasion if it’s time to cut him loose but he’s nothing if not sentimental when it comes to his long-termers. 

Looking at this guy, meek and quiet, it’s hard to see how he warranted rough handling but there's a cut in his eyebrow and a red mark on his cheekbone that will darken as time progresses. It just seems wrong. What did he do to provoke Mario? Ortega can usually hold his brother off, though he often comes under the crossfire himself. 

It’s only when Nigel starts conversing with him that his employee's lack of patience starts to make sense to him.

“So, may I ask what your name is?”

This is the point when Nigel's hapless crew sigh aloud because they know. They know that their jobs just became that much more difficult. 

Nigel won't get rid of any man if he’s personalised him. 

“My name is Adam. A-Adam William Charles Raki.”

The kid doesn’t even lie. Normally they hesitate and try to spin a web. Adam doesn’t do that. 

Something in the way that he answers makes Nigel wonder if it even crossed his mind to. 

“Alright, Adam William Charles Raki, Do you know why you’re here?”

“No.”

This is where they usually beg for their lives and claim there to be some kind of mistake. This is where they promise that they’ll say nothing, not to anyone. The men who love their wives will swear on her life and the ones who don’t will swear on their mother’s.

Adam’s got bright-white sneakers and jeans pressed in such tight lines and creases that Nigel guesses he’s going to be a mama's boy because there’s no ring on his finger and no wife irons her husband’s clothes like that.

He waits.

Adam doesn’t beg.

“I don’t know why I’m here but I know I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

Because he's an important man? Because he's destined for greater things? Because the whole world and it's aunt will be looking for him and if he doesn't turn up, all Hell will break loose?

“I'm not supposed to be here because it’s Thursday and on Thursdays I’m supposed to be at the planetarium by 6pm. We have a group of fifty children in tonight from St Mary’s Middle School. I was putting on a light show. Judy will be expecting me.”

“And, Judy is…?”

“My employer.”

Spoken as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

The way that Adam speaks to Nigel is patronising, as if he’s addressing someone of minimal intelligence. Ordinarily, it would prick up Nigel’s sense of pride and tap into his need to prove himself but there’s something oddly innocent in the way that Adam portrays himself, without malice and without contempt. 

It’s intriguing, rather than infuriating.

“What happens if you don’t show?”

“If I don’t show I’ll get fired. If I’m late, I’ll get a tardy notice on my employment record."

"And, that would be the worst thing in the world, would it?"

"Yes. I’m always precisely fifteen minutes early, traffic permitting, so that I can familiarise myself with the space before people start arriving. I’ve never been late. Not once.”

“Not even once?”

“No.”

This seems important to the young man. Such a life must be so simple. So easy.

So much better than this, Nigel thinks. 

(*)

They talk, which is novel since Nigel would've been in and out by now and his boys would’ve been busying themselves with lye baths and shallow graves.

It doesn't seem right on this occasion. 

Nigel gets to know a young man whose mind is a fascinating place and whose initial oddities prove themselves to be part of a brilliant mind that sees things in bright, vivid technicolor. Nigel, by nature, is not easily enchanted but something about the simple manner in which Adam conducts himself piques his interest and, rather than want to silence him as his guys had, he finds himself waning more of him. 

He learns that Adam is good with machinery and programming; that he was a toy maker once until he lost his job for making too little and too much all at once. The reason he could name the gun and quote it's entire history is because he'd been working on an add-on for a computer game and he wanted it to be the most realistic it could possibly be.

"I don't like weapons," he said, "but my employer told me I had to understand marketability. I find it difficult to think outside of the box. I find that term very misleading because thoughts aren’t in boxes, they’re in heads. You can’t put a thought in a box unless you write it down."

“That’s very true.”

He's a man who is proud of how work and proud of his achievements. 

He’s also a man who is aware of his limitations, and isn’t that something Nigel could learn from? 

Isn’t it something everyone could? 

"I have this thing. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. It makes things difficult for me sometimes. My mind blindness means that I often just assume people think like I do. If I like coffee, I don’t understand that someone else might not. I just assume and my dad used to tell me that to assume was to make an ass of you and me. My condition makes it difficult to be objective."

Nigel has no such condition but he finds objectivity difficult also. 

Nigel learns that Adam’s disorder that renders him out of his depth in normal social situations, makes him literal and blunt without meaning to be.

"I find it difficult to understand what people want from me."

It’s why he’d been so strange, why his actions and reactions had not followed the pattern any of them would expect for a man in his situation. 

“My dad said that people might take advantage of that.”

Those words alone strike something deep inside of Nigel because he understands it to be true even if Adam does not. 

How many bad, bad men and women would see him as an opportunity? 

Adam shifts. Though his tapping (“it’s called stimming”) had stopped, it’s starting back up again with a vengeance, as though his anxiety has caught up with him and remembered its place. 

"Can you take me back now, please? If we leave now I might just get there on time. I really don’t want to be late."

If only it were that simple. 

(*)

A ‘normal’ human being (“NT”, as Adam calls them) would’ve realised by now that something was amiss. They would’ve read between the lines and figured out that Nigel had no intention of letting them go and that their being in the wrong place at the wrong time might mean more than just a mark on their employment record. 

Adam doesn’t realise. With each and every passing minute, he frets about the fact he isn't where he is supposed to be. Mario whispers in Nigel's ear that it’s time to stop playing with the guy and finish him off. 

"C'mon, man, why are you dragging this out? It's cruel."

Nigel tells him to know his place. 

"No witnesses, boss. Your words. We can make it quick, Nigel, he’s a nice kid - but he needs to go."

"Let me handle this."

It earns a laugh, low and sardonic. 

"You going soft in your old age?"

Nigel proves he's still 'got it' when he silences Mario with a look, a look that holds such a promise of violence that he doesn't even need to follow it up with words. If Adam sees the look, if he hears the words, his face doesn't betray it. 

It’s more the fact he couldn’t read it at all. 

(*)

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

His arms are folded across his chest and he’s fighting hard to control his breathing. The look on his face is one of absolute anguish. It tickles Nigel’s senses a little but it doesn’t ease his conflict. 

The truth is, he simply does not know what to do. 

“Are you in pain, Adam? Have I laid a finger on you?”

“You’re hurting me emotionally by keeping me here. I can’t lose another job.”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know? You’re a bad person. I don’t listen to bad people. They hurt my ears.”

It comes to something when being called a ‘bad person’ by a kid like Adam would strike more self-doubt into Nigel than being told the very same thing by a man in a position of power. What power does Adam have over him? What power is it at all?

"You know, Adam, we're not what you think."

They are. They're all that and more but, for some unspeakable, unthinkable and unimaginable reason, it seems important to Nigel to play it down. 

“They kidnapped a man,” Adam says, as though Nigel is not aware of this fact. “I think they killed him.”

“Did you see them kill him?”

“No.”

“Then, how do you know they didn’t just put him away somewhere?”

The question throws Adam a little. His eyes shift and his thoughts shift and, when he frowns, he looks like a small boy contemplating the existence of something he once thought was real. 

“I-I don’t know. But, they took me, too. That’s a federal crime that can lead to a sentence of life imprisonment. They took me and now you won’t let me go. That’s false imprisonment. That’s crime too.”

“It wasn’t how it looked, Adam.”

"He pointed a *gun* at me."

"But, he didn't shoot. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?"

Adam thinks in black and white. 

Nigel tries to key him into the areas of grey. 

“Those who commit crimes are criminals by default. Isn't that fact?"

“Sometimes it’s not that simple, kid.”

Adam's friend Harlan once told him that it's not always as simple as it looks, that no matter what his father told him, the police are not automatically good and that criminals are not automatically bad. 

He told Adam that he needed to look at the facts and the mitigating circumstances before judging a person's actions because, on paper, Harlan is a criminal too. 

"I broke the law," Harlan said, "but that doesn't make me a bad person. Sometimes, people do things because they have to, no matter what the cost."

Nigel tells Adam it was a misunderstanding and that they were merely seeing that justice was served when they took that man. He wasn’t a good man either, a real bad man who was causing trouble for innocent people around the town. 

"We weren't going to hurt him, Adam. We just needed him to listen to what we had to say."

"Why didn't you just say it?"

"Because he didn't want to hear it, even though it was important he did."

“And, why did you take me?”

“Because we thought you wouldn’t understand.” 

Though Nigel is not known for his patience, something about this guy disarms him. It could be his honesty. It could be his oblivion to the nuances he is presented with.

It could just be his face, beautiful in a way that Nigel has never seen before.

He doesn’t want to hurt him, nor does he want to frighten him. 

He wants for Adam to comprehend.

“They stole from us, those people. The people who work for him, they hurt one of my friends very badly.”

They say Theo will never walk again.

Adam sighs. 

“Two wrongs doing make a right.”

It’s such a simplistic view of the way things work. 

“Do you believe in justice, Adam?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the man you saw in the back of the car, he was a bad man. A very bad man. He’s been threatening a lot of people and has a lot of influential men in his pocket.”

Adam frowns at this turn of phrase and mouths the word “metaphor” but allows Nigel to continue.

“If we’d tried to go through legal channels, we never would’ve got back what was ours and we never would’ve made amends for Theo. We needed the money he stole from us for some very important things. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

"Do you understand that we had to be careful because you happened to see us?"

"You thought I might get the wrong idea."

"Yes, and what you have to know is that, if the police found out that we'd had words with this gentleman, we'd be the ones who got in trouble, and that's something we can't let happen."  
For some reason, Adam’s mood shifts from comprehension to offense. His arms fold across his chest and, for the first time in the whole encounter, he looks Nigel straight in the eye. 

"I'm not an idiot. You don't want me to say anything."

"That's right."

"Then, I won't. All you had to do is explain. Harlan told me that mitigating circumstances can be a deciding factor when it comes to what's right and wrong and sometimes, the law isn’t the book we should go by. If this is one of those times then all you had to do is tell me. I would’ve listened."  
And, just like that, Nigel reaches his decision. That Adam does not need to die. That the world would be a damn site worse off if he were not in it. 

"I really don't want to hurt you, Adam."

"Then, don't."

"How can I trust you?"

"Because I don't know how to lie, and if I tell you I won’t say anything you have to believe me."

(*)

“What were you doing in an alleyway anyway?”

Nigel thinks that Adam’s ridiculous tangents are a thing of beauty, would rather listen to them than his crew talking about the next gun run or the odds of the next betting syndicate they were looking to get into. 

Adam looks up at the sky, his head resting against the glass. The window is barred and grated but he can just about make out the moon.

“It’s where I go.”

“Why?”

“I can see my apartment from down there if I tilt my head to the left, a little. I like the way my telescope looks from a distance and I check to see it’s still there. The alleyway’s my best vantage point.”

Nigel had a telescope when he was eleven. It was the last thing his father ever gave him before he died. 

He’s never told anyone that before but he gets the impression he’d tell Adam. 

“You like stars?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“People with no imagination, I suppose. People who don’t want to fly to the fucking moon before reaching the stars.”

It was one of Nigel’s childhood fascinations. When things were bad at home he’d look up into the night sky and hope to Christ that there was a planet out there that didn’t have to deal with the shit they dealt with on this Godforsaken cesspit. He dreamed of getting out of this place, of taking up wings and just going somewhere he’d never float back from. 

It was escapism at its grandest. 

“I love the stars,” Adam tells him. “I know as much about the solar system as most people know about Kim Kardashian. She’s a different kind of star. That’s what Harlan says, anyway. He says that my stars are better. More solid.”

He smiles.

“Less butt.”

“He sounds like a smart man.”

“He is. He graduated High School with a good GPA but he hit hard times when he was in his twenties. People don’t realise how smart he actually is.”

“I believe it.”

“If you like astronomy, you should come to the planetarium some time. I can teach you all there is to know. Or, all there is to know within reason. The universe is ever expanding. Nobody will ever know all there is to know about the Universe, but I can teach you a lot of things.”

It's moving, the way Adam trusts that Nigel will keep his word not to harm him. That he sees his future as such a definite.

“That’s if I don’t get fired first.”

"You won't be fired."

"How do you know?"

"Because this wasn't your fault."

"I haven’t even called.”

"You can tell her you were caught up. That you couldn't get near to your phone. You said you can’t lie. That wouldn’t be a lie, would it?”

That’s true, so very, very true. 

TBC


	2. Captive Reasoning

Time passes, an alien concept for Nigel who usually wipes his hands before the blood has time to dry. He tries to get to know Adam, a tactic he’s used before with some success because the more he knows, the more he has to hold over someone. It isn’t long before he realises it’s pointless.

“I know where you live” can be a valid threat. “I know where your brother works.”

Adam, straightforward and painfully naïve, had given him his full home address, zip code included, under the misguided impression Nigel plans on taking him home.

“If we leave now we’ll cut out a lot of traffic, Nigel.”

“Yeah, we’re not leaving now.”

“But, it’s coming up to a busy time, and – “

“ - Not now, Adam.”

It becomes clear he is struggling with his current situation, that in some ways he’s just like the rest of them. The black and white bravery is rapidly dying away leaving only fervent anxiety in its wake as he begins to realise the magnitude of all of this. He moves from side to side with his eyes fixed firmly on the ground but his talking is almost feverish in its incessant nature.

There's something building up inside the kid that Nigel can feel as well as see and he soon realises that this is not sustainable, whatever this is. Keeping a person alive is so much more difficult than ending them. It's simpler when he kills them, less to think about, less chance of being a human being about things.

“Adam, do you ever take a breath?”

“Of course I do. Human beings can’t function without breathing.”

He rambles unremittingly about his work and how important it is; how without it, kids all over the city would be forced to contend with two-dimensional space study that's little more than what could be found on the pages of a brochure. At every opportunity, he reminds Nigel he shouldn't be here, as if saying it often enough might make it sink in.

"It's 7 o'clock. I'm supposed to put on the slide show now."

"It's 7.15. I had cookies and milk and a cartoon about the archer and the Big Dipper."

"It's 7.45. I'm supposed to be doing the talk about life on Mars."

"I know," is all Nigel says as he watches his cigarette burn down to the filter without it even touching his lips. "I know. I'm sorry."

He watches as Adam chews his nails to the quick and it takes everything he has not to pull those hands away because he’s pretty sure he’ll see blood, soon, the way he keeps going back to them.

Finally, he cracks, and the only thing Nigel thinks is that it's admirable how long he's lasted.

"I don't feel good, Nigel. I can't be here."

"What's wrong?" Nigel asks. Even to his own ears it sounds insincere because the wellbeing of others has never been a concern of his.

"My head hurts. You said you were going to take me home. You said -"

"I said what? I didn't say that, Adam."

"I'm going to miss my show. I already missed my school group. I have dishes to wash and I have laundry to do because that's what the chart says. I need to get to the laundry room before 9.30 or there’ll be too many people there. I can’t wash my clothes if there are too many people."

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like too many people and if it gets any later I won’t be able to do it because that’s when Mrs Johnson does hers, and Mr Crawford, and sometimes the doctor from 4a. Four people in such a small space is not a good idea.”

"You can do your laundry another day."

"But today is laundry day."

He keeps looking at the watch on Nigel's wrist and with every passing minute it gets worse. He gets worse. It was easier when he was calm. Now that he's close to panic, Nigel finds himself at a loss. He'd usually smash their head into a wall to stop the repeated pleas for release. Violence comes so much more naturally than reassurance, always has, and he is this close to calling his guys back and asking them to drop the kid off somewhere so that he doesn’t have to deal with him.

He sighs, because out of sight means out of mind and Christ knows what they’d do to him before they pushed him out of the car.

"Jesus, kid. I liked you better thirty fucking minutes ago. Anyone ever tell you, you think too much?"

When he places a hand on his captive's shoulder it feels like a token gesture.

Adam instinctively shrugs it away.

"It's all gonna be good. We'll figure this out. Alright? You just gotta give me time."

“But, I don’t have time.”

Sea blue eyes look at a spot besides Nigel's head, and Adam pleads with them. He pleads for understanding. Nigel gets the impression he's been doing that all his life, pleading for understanding, pleading for someone to see beyond his rigid layers and get to the guy that’s inside.

It breaks his stone-cold heart when he sees the look in those eyes.

"I want to believe what you tell me..."

"Then, believe it."

"Harlan says I'd believe the sky was red if someone told me it was. He says I'm naive. I don't think that's true."

It's true. It's more than true.

"You know what I am. You know I’m not a law abiding man. Right?”

"Yeah."

"Well, then, you have to understand why I can't just send you on your merry fucking way. I need to think this through. Figure out what's best for both or us. You're lucky I like you. This could be a lot harder on you."

"But I said I wouldn't say anything. I told you I don’t know how to lie. Didn't you believe me?"

If it were only so simple...

"I don't believe many people."

"Innocent until proven guilty. It's the very foundation of the law."

“Yeah, well, like I said, I’m not a law abiding man.”

Innocence, for Nigel, has always been something to chase, something to covet. How can he use it? How can he corrupt it? Nigel was never innocent. He envied those that were allowed to be. Even as a child he was manipulative. He’d twist up scenarios to suit his own needs. He’d turn on the tears if he knew it would get him out of trouble, would bend the truth no matter who was hurt in the process. He has arrived where he is in life by filtering his morals accordingly. Truth was always flexible to Nigel. His grandmother called him a heathen, his mother a foul mistake.

He smiled and told them he loved them.

That was a lie.

In a woman, innocence can be a powerful thing to claim. It can give a man a feeling of superiority. It is an aphrodisiac, a rare pearl and a glimmering notch one one’s bedpost. In whore circles, the virgins always go for the most cash. Men want to be the person who took that clear-white canvass and left their mark on it. He has always seen innocence in men as weakness; a route in where there should be none. Innocence is naivety. Naivety is a bullet with which to strike a person down. It’s dark human nature to want to steal innocence.

Not here, though. Not now.

Adam’s naivety is a bonus and a defining characteristic. There is no pretence to it, no false front and no hollow center. It’s everything he is and everything he should be and, for once, Nigel wants nothing more than to preserve it. To ruin it would be to pull the wings off a butterfly; to burn the edges of the soft skin of a rose and leave it wilting and less than before.

Nigel gets the distinct feeling he would kill anyone that tried.

“Look, Adam, I can see you think I’m feeding you a fucking line here. But, I can help you,” he says. “I can make things right here.”

"Then, let me go."

Adam digs his fingers into his upper arms, arms that are folded across him in such a way they resemble a straitjacket to hold him tight and firm. He looks painfully uncertain.

For once in his life, so does Nigel.

"I can't do that. Not right now. But, I will. Soon. I fucking will, and if your boss fires you because you didn’t show for one fucking night? She's a bitch and she didn’t deserve you to begin with."

The thought of Nigel even entertaining the possibility of him being fired upsets Adam. It’s a physical, tangent thing and it wracks him to his core. Usually a clock ticks on Nigel's benevolence and this kind of fragility is seen as a trigger.

It seems in this case that the clock stopped.

"You hear me? She doesn't deserve you, Adam Raki."

“I can’t get fired. If I get kicked out I’ll be living in Central Park with the racoons and I don’t belong there any more than they do.”

“Trust me, your Judy will understand. If she's a decent person, she'll understand."

“How would you know?”

“Is she fair?”

Adam contemplates this for a moment. Nigel can see the thoughts ticking over in his head as he processes the facts and information surrounding the question. He scrutinises Judy’s existence and how it fits into his moral ‘code’ of goodness and it’s with such fierce determination Nigel wonders if she can feel it, all the way over in the science museum.

“Is she good?”

“She she works with children so she can’t have a criminal record and she bakes macadamia cookies every Friday. She…she gave me a job when nobody else would and she bought me an add-on for my telescope for my birthday."

“And, those things make her fucking good?”

“Yes?"

“Well, then, she’ll understand why you can’t be with her today and why you need to be with me. What's a little time spent between friends, eh?"

"But, I - I just..."

He shakes his head.

She might understand it but its clear Adam doesn’t.

"I don't know what's happening. My schedule's all wrong and it's making me agitated and you won't let me leave even though you said you would but now you're saying you didn't say that and...and...now I'm forgetting what I'm supposed to say and that never happens to me. I can't...I can't do this. Why are you doing this?"

His words run into themselves and his face, his beautiful face, it's turned pink by the stress of it.

Nigel blanches. Adam’s distress is a physical ache and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

"Hey," he says quietly as he tries to move closer. "Calm the fuck down, okay?"

"My head hurts, Nigel."

"I know. Hush, kid. Come on. Take a breath."

Nigel wonders if he’s going to be faced with a full-fledged meltdown. Adam looks around the room as if searching for something, anything, that tells him why he needs to be here and why Nigel won’t let him leave. He might not be able to read people but he seems to know instinctively that running isn’t an option. Nigel has watched his eyes move to the door on a number of occasion, has seen the inner battle as it plays out on his features. He’s seen him make the right decision time and time again and he respects that.

So many others would make a poorly executed run for it.

Adam inhales deeply and counts to ten. His lips move and Nigel can read each number as it falls from them quietly, can see each figment of tension as it begins to leave him.

He meets Nigel’s eyes for a brief second when he has himself under control as if he’s getting the message across.

Nigel nods his head.

“I’m not good company and your workers told me you had lots of friends in high places.”

It was a casual threat that Adam didn't read; a poorly hidden message he did not get.

"I don't have many friends because I'm not good with people. I don't know how to be your friend."

Nigel just smiles.

"You're doing okay.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Trust me, you are.”

The only ‘truth’ Nigel knows, here, is that letting Adam walk away from him doesn’t bear thinking. Things turn to blood in the blink of an eye but how often do they turn to gold?

Adam is gold.

Adam is gold and Nigel can't let him go.

“I’m sorry,” he says, softly. “For before. I get overstimulated and I can’t process it. I just…get overwhelmed.”

As far as understatements go, it’s a big one. It’s painful and raw and concrete and physical and Nigel feels exhausted just having seen it.

He places a hand on the younger man’s thigh.

This time he doesn’t flinch.

"Just...let me show you how grateful I am for your promise of silence. Let me have a good friend for just a little bit. Is that too much to ask?"

Some might say yes.

Adam says nothing at all.

(*)

Nigel sends a message to Judy from his own phone. It’s grovelingly apologetic and uncharacteristically polite and cites the reason for Adam’s absence as him ‘helping a close friend in serious trouble’. In the mayhem that had ensued he’d simply left his phone behind.

“He wants you to know he’ll make it up to you,” the text reads and, as its sent off with an electronic whoosh, Nigel turns his attention back to Adam.

"You see? Simple.”

The story is not a lie. He is helping a friend, although Nigel wouldn’t consider himself close. Not yet, at least. Adam's thumb had found its way to his mouth when Nigel had been typing out the half-truth and for a moment he’d feared he was going to suck it. Instead he’d brushed it against his lips, his other hand had slowly stroking across the fabric of his trousers, an act he explained as ‘stimming’ when Nigel had raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not comfortable,” he whispers. “I’ve let her down and now you are lying to her.”

“I’m not lying. Are we not friends?”

Adam thinks about this for a moment before nodding his head.

“Well, the truth is, I was in serious fucking trouble tonight – and, you’re helping me through it just by being here. I already told you, there is no lie."

“But, you said – “

“ – shh. To Hell with what I said. I was in trouble and now I’m not. That’s all you need to know. So, thank you. There will be people sleeping soundly in their beds tonight because you are here with me."

"But, how?"

"No hows, Adam. Just know that it's true."

Adam doesn’t need to know he’s preventing criminal activity just by keeping Nigel occupied but it’s an absolute, God’s honest fact. He’d woken up angry for no reason other than it was early and the incompetence of his associates had left a sour aftertaste.

How badly he had wanted to wrap someone's head in plastic before caving it in with his own bare hands because there's nothing more intimate than that. Had it not been for Adam’s presence in his world there’s no telling what he might’ve done to regulate his own universe and bring some semblance of control to it.

He's losing some kind of control with Adam.

He doesn't think that's such a bad thing.

"Just...relax. It’s all good."

There’s a distinct flinch in the younger man when Nigel’s cell signals a return message from his employer. It’s a throwaway prepay, not remotely traceable to him and so the number being ‘known’ to those outside his immediate circle is not an issue to him.

Adam’s discomfort is, though, and the sadist in Nigel would prolong it as much as humanly possible just to get a kick but the long-suppressed human in him wins out. He holds the phone out for Adam to take from him.

“Read it,” he says. “See what a good person your Judy is.”

"Okay."

She is, as expected, greatly understanding of his predicament. She tells Adam to take as much time as he needs, that she's sorry to hear about his friend but that he's lucky to have someone like Adam taking care of him. She tells him the children love his Saturn and are particularly fond of his mechanical solar system and the way it lights up when they touch it.

You did a good job, Judy's message says, now do a good job with your friend and I'll see you tomorrow.

Adam laughs.

It's a beautiful sound.

"Well?"

“They like my solar system”, he says, with an air of unfettered pride. The smile sits well on his face. “I worked really hard on that. It took me thirty-eight hours to get the timing right.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. One of the children at the middle school is autistic. His name is Frederick. He’s eleven years old. Autistic children appreciate a sensory experience so I knew Frederick would like it. I'm so happy he liked it."

“Do you appreciate a sensory experience, Adam?”

“Yes.”

Spoken to others it might sound like innuendo; a well-crafted ‘hit’ in ways that differ to Nigel’s usual hits. He’s subjected many a woman to his own brand of ‘sensory experience’, blindfolds and sightless touches taking over from the bright lights of a high-class nightclub; from deprivation to indulgence in one fell swoop.

Adam doesn’t take it as a sexually charged question and Nigel wonders if that straight-talking innocence burrows so deep the thought didn’t even occur.

It amuses him.

“I went to a special daycare center before mainstream kindergarten. It had a sensory room with bright lights and lots of rhythmic sounds. I used to feel so safe in there when my head was running away with me. N-not that heads can run away, that's a figure of speech."

"Of course."

Adam looks up, those blue eyes searching the ceiling for something, anything, to grab hold of. It’s dark up there. No light. No movement. You can see the moon from here, though, high up in the sky. You can see it if you tilt your head and look through the painted-over windows and grates that sit near the beams.

Adam looks stricken.

"I sometimes feel anxious for no reason at all," he whispers, and Nigel isn't sure he knows he's saying those words aloud. "The stars help me focus."

The words cause the older man an unfamiliar pain.

He'd give anything to take that anxiety away.

Anything.

“Do you feel safe here, Adam?”

Nigel leans forward and grabs Adam's wrist only there’s no menace, not like there normally would be. He just wants to ground him. Bring him back. The thought of Adam flinching and breaking is something that prickles and burns.

Nigel doesn’t ask himself why.

“Do you feel safe with me?”

The answer is simple, a plaintive “No.”

Bravado is not a concept Adam is versed in yet with obvious difficulty he looks Nigel in the eye. Those eyes are an interesting colour, a hint of green and even yellow underlying the obvious blue. There’s a lot in them, Nigel thinks, but most of all there is purity.

Honesty.

It’s the one human trait he appreciates more than anything else on this Earth.

“I don’t feel safe. You curse too much and people who curse a lot are generally considered aggressive and untrustworthy but I’m…I’m not scared. Not anymore. I believe you when you say you won’t harm me physically. I just...I don't know what else to believe."

As far as trust goes, Nigel’s guys would laugh at how misplaced it was. To trust a guy like Nigel, with all his darkness and all his vicious indifference, is as amusing as it is terrifying.

The simple fact is, Nigel doesn’t think he could hurt this kid even if he wanted to.

“I won’t lay a finger on you. Trust me on that one, if nothing else. Just…let me figure out what the Hell to do with you, alright?"

“Sometimes the logical answer is the best one."

"My place is forty minutes, give or take. You’d like my place. Very secluded. Blanket of fucking stars in my back yard, no light pollution whatsoever.”

Adam sighs.

“Is that where taking me while you figure out what to do with me?”

"It's the most logical answer."

"Hmm."

Adam bites his lip to keep himself from responding by reflex; a whimper, perhaps, or a lamenting cry. All the kid wants is to go home, fall back into line.

He changes course when he realises he's reached the end. It reminds Nigel of a test mouse systematically exploring new avenues as a way of finding weakness. Sadly for the mouse it's fucked no matter what it does.

He knows this will be Adam's final play.

He can see in the kid’s eyes it’s all he’s got left.

“I, um…I usually have my raisin pack now.”

“Your what?”

“It's 8.30pm. That's when I have my raisin pack.”

“I don’t have any of those.”

“I have some at home."

Hopeful. Seriously fucking hopeful. And, cute. So fucking cute.

"Of course you do."

"Twenty-six snack pack boxes. I usually have one at 8.30, just before my show. I buy in bulk because it's more cost effective. I get antsy if I don’t have my raisins, Nigel."

Imagine a world, Nigel thinks, so regulated by routine. Would it be a comfort? A curse? 

"You won't like me when I'm antsy."

“Well, I might not have any raisins but I do have a bottle of wine. Fucking good wine. It’s practically the same thing."

“No it isn’t. Wine is made from grapes, not raisins. French wine, in particular, is very good. It's more than just the crop and more to do with the process of fermentation. The French are very good at it.”

“Really?”

“Apparently.”

“Well, would you like to join me in drinking some fucking good French wine at my place, where we can look at the stars and you can teach me about the Big Dipper and the fucking archer? Since you're not going to work and I haven’t figured out what to do with you yet, we might as well make a night of it.”

He smiles.

“It might help me see the fucking light, so to speak.”

“Going outside would help. It’s pretty dark in here.”

“Figuratively speaking.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I don't usually drink. Alcohol makes me strange.”

“Strange?”

Like it's an unusual thing.

Like it's novel.

“Yes. My old history teacher used to say alcohol was the nectar of the devil but wine isn’t nectar and I don’t think the devil would drink wine, given the choice, do you? That’s rhetorical, by the way, you don’t have to answer it. Rhetorical means –"

“ – I know what it means, Adam, but for the record I don’t think the devil would be interested in wine, no. They give wine in church. God fucking approves. I say the devil would be a whiskey man just to piss the the Big Man off.“

Nigel himself is a whiskey man and on more than one occasion, Nigel has been called a devil, if not ‘the’ devil.

“My priest told me wine was good. The blood of Christ, Adam. How could the blood of Christ ever hurt us?”

It's logic; warped logic, but logic all the same. The church represents God. The church says wine is okay, ergo God himself says wine is okay.

“That makes sense,” Adam agrees.

The wine itself was meant for a whore named Constance. Nigel isn’t normally one for wining and dining but Constance won't service him until he shows her a good time. It's more effort than he appreciates but she gives the best head he's ever had on any continent so he guesses it’s a fair trade-off and Nigel can be fair when it counts.

He once thought Constance was the most beautiful human being he'd ever seen, the very definition of physical perfection.

He no longer thinks that.

The more Nigel looks at Adam, the more taken he is with him. His usual brand is blonde, big tits, a cocksucking mouth and not enough brains to know what misogyny means. He is a fan of the female form with all its curves and physical complexities, the dainty twirl of a wrist and the soft-sharp dip where the neck meets the freckled shoulder. He likes nothing more than to bury his face into a mountain of curl as painted fingernails autograph his skin where he lies.

Adam's beauty is deeper than that. It's soul deep. Mind deep. Adam's curves and complexities are housed in his head behind delicate blue eyes and a mop of his own curl. His perfect, unblemished skin is a blank page that Nigel will never write upon and woe betide anyone who dares.

"Just...have a drink with me, Adam. Please. By my friend. Be my companion. Then I'll take you home. You can hold me to that."

"You promise?"

“Cross my heart and hope to fucking die.”

How many times has he promised that very thing only to end the night with a battered, bloodied, terrified victim in his bathtub promising the world if only Nigel would let them be?

Adam smiles. It's a quiet smile, small and beautiful.

He kicks his foot along the ground and watches as the dirt scatters.

“I never understood that saying. Seems very dumb to wish yourself dead just to prove you’re telling the truth. What does it matter if you’re dead?”

“Good point, Adam,” Nigel says. “Good fucking point.”


	3. Threshold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a small chapter. Thank you for comments and kudos. They are very much appreciated xxxx

Many people have passed through this threshold; women, men, associates, adversaries. The rack that sits beside the oak-wood door has housed many a coat and the coffee table in the living room has entertained many a glass of too-expensive wine and too-pretentious crystal glasses.

The carpet has been cleaned more times than Nigel can remember, his own blood seeping into the dark pattern when he’s crawled home after a particularly fierce encounter. On more than one occasion someone else’s blood has required the need for cornstarch paste and old wives remedies to draw it out of the grain. There is a history of violence that clings to this place and Nigel wonders if Adam can sense it.

He hopes he cannot. 

Nigel watches as this strange young man tentatively crosses the verge and scans the place. Adam looks upon every surface and every item as though he’s cataloguing them. Nigel feels violated, somehow, as though those vibrant blue eyes are putting him into some logical sense of order and judging him based on how he lives. What he owns.

He wonders what conclusion Adam reaches based on his expensive tastes; his admittedly pretentious choice of colour and flavour.

He wonders how the kid labels him, now.

“Do you live here by yourself?” he asks, every word annunciated as if it has equal importance to the one before. He drops no letters. Each and every sound has it's place as if making up for the lack of physical gesticulation and eye contact. 

“I’m a territorial man. I don’t want anyone pissing in my corners…not literally, Adam, before you say anything. I just prefer not to share my space.”

“Oh. Okay. Why did you bring me here, then?”

“Because I enjoy company, I’m just not one for…coexistence. It’d drive me fucking crazy.”

Satisfied with the answer, Adam nods. He picks up a small ornamental dragon, stares at its details with avid curiosity before placing it down notably straighter than before. It looks better, Nigel thinks. Neater. Adam looks neater, too, stood there with his hands pressed to his sides, his solemnness tidy on his face.

He could get used to this.

“Do _you_ live alone?”

“Yes. I used to live with my dad. He’s in New Jersey now.”

“New Jersey? Is he working there?”

“No. He’s dead.”

He smiles, and that smile is perhaps the first shred of dishonesty he’s exhibited or expressed since Nigel met him. There's no joy in that smile. It's far from his eyes, barely in his lips. 

Nigel instantly hates his sad, fake smile and the circumstances that placed it there. 

“I was told people go to New Jersey to die. It’s…a joke. He's buried next to my mother at St Mary's cemetery. It's near my apartment, not in New Jersey."

“Oh, right. Fuck. Christ. I got you.”

“It’s supposed to be funny. It’s called ‘gallows humour’, also known as dark humour and prevalent in the so-called black comedy' - although that term is dying out because of racist connotations.”

The fact Adam isn’t genuinely laughing indicates he doesn’t actually get the joke. He doesn’t understand what’s funny anymore than Nigel does. Still, Nigel smiles politely. He’s not usually the kind of person to pander to anyone’s feelings but it seems like the right thing to do in this case. 

Adam doesn’t move. He just…stands there.

“I’m sorry. About your father.

“You have nothing to do with him being dead."

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry for your loss. I lost mine young. You never really get over the loss of a father even if your father was an asshole.”

“My father wasn’t an asshole.”

“No" Nigel smiles. "But, mine was.”

“Well, I’m sorry your father was an asshole.”

"You have nothing to do with that."

Adam smiles. This time, it's genuine.

"Doesn't mean I can't be sorry he was."

It’s through a need for diversion and distraction when Adam picks up more of Nigel’s ornamental stones and moves them so that they’re in line with the others. It’s not subtle. Nigel isn’t subtle either when he locks the front door, pocketing the key so that he’s the one in control of where this goes. Adam doesn’t notice. He is caught up in his own thoughts and, for a man with a voice that’s dripping in clarity and precision, he seems distinctly far away.

“You have a nice home.”

“Thank you. I’ve got a decent fucking couch. Would you like to come through? We can’t drink wine in the hallway.”

“Wine is a social drink. It can be drank anywhere. Even the hallway.”

“Yeah, well, I’d rather sit down. I’ve had a hard day and I know you have too, Adam. Come inside. I’m a lot of things but I’m not a shitty host.”

He’s wined and dined the elite of New York on occasion and, if there’s one thing they’ll say about him, it’s that this not-so-legal alien can make one Hell of a night of it.

He leads Adam inside and indicates for him to sit down. The couch is big enough for two but Nigel doesn’t want to get in his space, not when he looks as tense as he does with those palms still resting flat on his knees and his back pole-straight.

Nigel sits at the opposite end of the couch. He can’t help but feel that Adam is trying to disappear when he moves even further away. He wouldn’t be the first. 

Nigel remembers that Russian mob bastard Davidenko cowering of the very room pleading for his father’s help as Nigel threatened him with a kitchen knife. 

This room has seen many things.

It’s never quite seen someone like Adam.

The kid says nothing, _does_ nothing. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t engage. He just taps his fingers on his trouser leg and waits for Nigel to stop laughing at the image of Moscow’s elite pissing himself all over the living room floor.

“Sorry,” Nigel says as he clears his throat as well as his mind. "I was just thinking."

"Okay."

Adam continues to look at a spot directly ahead of him for more time than is natural before seemingly breaking out of It when he notices the picture on the wall through the dining room gateway.

“Is that Dali?”

It holds his attention and, for the first time since they left the warehouse, he looks intrigued. His body language changes almost immediately from guarded to entirely open. He looks towards Nigel with what can only be described as excitement, a strange change from what had gone before and so sudden its as if some other entity is inhabiting his body and animating him, somehow.

“It _looks_ like Dali.”

“It is. A replica, of course. I’m not made of money. You like art?”

“I like Dali. People mistakenly think Aspies only appreciate straight lines and things that make logical sense, which is true for the most part, but I love the colours Dali uses. He has a very particular style."

They’re mindfucks for paintings, Nigel thinks. He’s spent many a night under the influence of whatever casual drug he could get his hands on just staring at them, getting lost in the lines and colours and shapes and distortions.

He just likes the strangeness.

“I have a particular fascination with his melted clock. He must’ve been on some fucking trip when he painted that one.”

“That painting is called ‘The Persistence of Memory’. People always think there’s a deepmeaning in the picture but it’s not that at all. Dali was inspired by melted cheese on a plate in his window. It’s as straightforward as that.”

“The simplest answer is sometimes the right one. Right?”

“The most logical, yes.”

Nigel has always lived his life reading between the lines. What do people mean when they don’t say something out loud? What does that glance mean when there’s no words that go with it?

_What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean?_

Maybe he needs to learn to stop asking that question.

“You’re a clever man, Adam Raki. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yes. My IQ is above average but I don’t have any common sense. That's why I lost my last job."

"Common sense is overrated, anyway. Just another tool to force us all to comply. I was a reckless young man but it didn't stop me from getting where I wanted to be in life. I just pummelled my way through."

There's no reasonable response that Adam can make, that much is obvious. He doesn't know what to say and so he says nothing. Nigel gets the impression he could speak endlessly about the moon and the stars, about the dipper and the archer, but filling in quiet spaces is beyond him. 

"Not much for small talk, are you?"

Theo was one for small talk. You couldn't shut that kid up. He doesn't talk so much any more. Sometimes, Nigel values the silence. Other times it deafens him. 

Adam replies in monotone. 

"Social speaking is difficult for people like me."

Nigel can relate. He can threaten. He can verbally molest. He can charm the birds from the trees when he's wearing his Nigel mask but underneath that? Away from the threats and the charm and the lies and the deceptions? Raw? Nigel is often at a loss. 

He leans back, mirroring Adam's posture. 

He looks at him and waits until Adam looks back. 

The smile he offers is the smile that hides behind the mask. 

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, sometimes it's fucking difficult for people like me too, Adam."


	4. Combustion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel bubbles over. Adam turns cold. Don't worry, though, he'll win him back. He's a very conflicted guy and he lives with a very specific code. This whole scenario violates everything he is as an inhumane human being. 
> 
> He won't hurt little Adam, though. Never. And that guy will make him work for his affections, that's for sure. 
> 
> ETA edited for typos. Damn phone.

The truth is, it was always going to escalate fast, no matter how good it started off. 

An hour passes and Nigel learns many things in Adam’s presence. 

He learns that the universe has no beginning and no end, an ever-expanding entity that builds itself into the empty space in front of it. It makes no sense to Nigel, like so many other things, but Adam’s precise and exact description of it indicates he sure as Hell knows what he’s talking about.

"Trust me," Adam says, clearly rehearsed, like he's reading from a script. "I'm an expert."

He learns about the many moons that inhabit the various systems found up in the sky and how, if not for his periodic bouts of high blood pressure and childhood history of asthma, Adam might've volunteered to live a desolate existence on the Red Planet. He learns, in turn, that for some people association and networking is not the end goal and a lifetime in solitude might be a welcome thing.

He learns that most stars in the night sky are already dead; that the light we see is the light of a thing long gone. 

"That's fucking depressing," Nigel says.

"It's not depressing. It's just science."

He learns the nutritional value of Macaroni and Cheese in it's entirety, as well as it's origins, and the precise balance of proteins and carbohydrates needed for optimum physical condition. 

He learns that twenty-nine year old men with sea-blue eyes and precise diction are capable of removing the bullets from the loaded gun that is his tolerance, replacing them with nothing more than blanks.

Finally, most notably, he learns there’s more to life than the next guy he scams; the next rival he takes down so many notches they’re either in the ground or close to it. He learns that not every adult male is a competitor and not every person who questions him is confrontational.

He is not the master of everyone’s Universe because, for Adam, the Universe is the master in itself. He's the kind of guy Nigel would find benefit in knowing. A logical guy. A guy not driven by money or control. 

"I'm always learning," Adam tells him, sipping the same glass of wine he's been nursing for the past hour. "The capability of the human brain is infinite."

"Infinite. Like space, right?"

"Precisely."

Nigel is not a quick study.

It all feels so strangely logical to Nigel, talking to this kid, hearing what he had to say. It feels so ordinary, almost domestic, like they’re two regular men having a glass of wine together on a work evening. If he half closes his eyes this might even pass for normality, something Nigel has never had and never thought possible with his brand of nuances and his culpabilities. Still, in the back of his mind there is the damning knowledge that someone died on his order tonight and Adam was privy to that.

He doesn't know how to proceed with that in his own best interests.

"Some people like to read the stars because they think the universe is going to fix their problems or tell them what car to buy. That doesn't make sense to me. Horoscopes are just a gimmick to sell magazines."

"Ah, kid, I wish the fucking stars would guide me now, I'll tell you that for free. I'd pay a lot for that."

"What would you like it to tell you?"

"What to do with you, that's what, because I sure as Hell don't know. You don't know what you could do to me."

"I couldn't do anything. That requires motivation and I have no motivation. I already promised to be quiet."

"You have no fucking idea, Adam. None."

Nigel’s head and his heart are unspeaking relatives, estranged and distant. They don’t get along, rarely agreeing on anything at all and, while his head is telling him he should push a pillow over Adam’s face to take away the obvious risk with the ease of an expert, his heart tells him something else entirely. 

It tells him he cannot kill this guy. 

It tells him he probably shouldn't kill anyone at all. 

Letting him walk away, though, it doesn't compute. For Adam it would be the equivalent of putting two dead circuits together or looking through a telescope with the lens cap still on. Letting him escape breathing and unscathed? It seems _crazy._

It also seems like the only possibility, here, and that is what fractures Nigel in as many seconds as it took for whatever unseen entity there is to create the God damned universe. Making himself vulnerable to another man, even in this sense, is unfathomable. 

It's a weakness he can't afford and the more he looks at this guy in all his naivety, the more it messes with his mind. 

“Fuck.”

"What is it?"

Like two atoms colliding, the magnitude of it all hits him. This whole setup. His attempts at being a nice guy. All of it just strikes him. 

The big fucking bang. 

If Adam sees the conflict inside of Nigel it doesn't show. He doesn't feel the not-so-subtle shift of an impulsive man trying to beat down his violent self-preservation instinct. He doesn't notice the fists curled in turmoil or the jaw clenched against itself. 

He doesn't hear the low growl of frustration that Nigel lets loose, seemingly from nowhere, doesn't sense the sudden build of tension that comes when Nigel's sense of right and wrong becomes a rarely-felt issue for him. He hasn’t experienced the flip-switch of the older man’s volatile nature, a trait that leaves even his most loyal associates on guard whenever he’s around them. 

Nigel's heart tells him "he will be the making of you."

Nigel’s head tells him "this man who cannot lie, he will be your downfall and you know it. He will be the death of you."

His body? It tells him not to leave anything behind when he tears him to pieces but his soul? His fucking soul aches for the kid. 

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ "

He lashes out like a man caught, _is_ a man caught. He’s caught as damningly as if he’d been caught with his fingers in a safe, vault or rival’s daughter.

There is no easy answer here.

“I should’ve just…left you behind. This is a problem for me. It's a big fucking problem. You know what happens when I go easy on people? You know what always happens when I try to be a nice guy? Things fuck up."

"N-Nigel, I ...”

“Stop talking. Just…let me fucking work this out, alright?” 

"But, I -"

**"Quiet!"**

He doesn’t mean to scare Adam, honest to fucking God he doesn’t, but when he raises his voice and slams his fist down on that table Adam doesn’t seem to realise the anger is aimed inward rather than outward. 

He jumps, a visible jerk throughout his whole body. Then, he freezes, a beautiful, poignant fucking statue, an angel in the lair of a blazing demon. 

It’s painful. 

"Adam - " 

"You keep saying that word. That curse. I hate it."

He closes his eyes and, like a small child frightened of thunder, he covers his ears until everything stops. The very act makes Nigel's gut churn. 

"I hate it," he whispers, a broken word that dies as soon as it's born like those damned stars. 

What is this, Nigel thinks? 

What is this feeling of wracking remorse if not maddeningly alien...and frighteningly dangerous?

He pulls Adam's hands away from his ears, gentle but firm. He can feel the way his body trembles in his hands, a flutter that bristles and burns him with guilt.

He hears the jerking whimper as it catches in Adam's throat and he wonders, 'am I such a monster?'

He knows the answer to that. 

“Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. What am I going to do here, kid? This isn't me. I don't have fucking 'friends'. I don't do wine and talking and I don't do fairness. I don't give free passes to guys who have something on me."

It's as if he's talking himself up, bubbling his own criminal anger as he speaks. 

"What was I thinking bringing you here? Now you know where I live. Do you know what that means?"

“No.”

“You know what I did. You know what I am."

Slower, needlessly menacing, he says "You know my address. You know my fucking _name_."

"Of course I know your name. You told me your name. Why did you tell me if you didn't want me to know?"

"Knowing a man's name gives you power over them. Do you get that? In my world that's how it is."

"Power? Please, I don't…I don’t understand."

"Of _course_ you understand."

"I _don't._ I don't understand any of this. That's why I wanted to go to Mars. So that I didn't have to."

Watching the way he wraps his arms around himself brings it home to Nigel. Those soft blue eyes dart across the floor in a back and forth motion as if looking for words that aren’t there and the slight tremble in his bottom lip makes it look like he might be close to tears.

Nigel can’t handle tears. 

He’s starting to think he can’t handle anything at all.

"I don't know what you want, Nigel. I'm feeling overloaded and I don't want to sh-shut...shutdown."

"Come on, kid."

"No! Please don't touch me. I need sensory regulation and I can't find that if you touch me."

It's the flinch that finishes Nigel off, a physical strike to his gut and his chest as this holy fucking innocent curls away from him like a lamb that doesn't understand why the lion is a threat but knows it must retreat. It feels like stepping on a butterfly whose wings you've already yanked away. If he had a gun he’d have cast it aside at this moment, dropped a trembling hand to his side like that movie cliché

He opens his hands out, submissive, helpless. 

"What do you want, Adam? What do you need me to do?"

“I need you to take me home right now. It's late. I need to go to bed. I still have chores to do and I need to feed my fish. Please."

Hearing them plead for their lives, for an end, for _anything_ , is usually a stroke on Nigel’s controlling nature.

Not here. Not now.

_"Please."_

Now it’s just a kick in his face. 

As a child he used to bite his own finger if he started feeling overwhelmed with fear or insecurity or rage. That tiny, incremental pain would bring him to the centre and calm him, somehow. As he got older that mild self harm transferred onto others, a punch to the face or a swift kick. It escalated from there. 

He can't kick Adam, nor can he punch him. Doesn't want to. Couldn't. 

Feelings are Nigel's Achilles Heel and Adam is the first arrow that's unexpectedly struck it. 

“Christ. I said I wasn’t going to get emotionally involved after Gabi. Fucking hell. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm just not a good guy. You get that?"

"Yes."

"Then, you know how difficult this must be for me. Going against everything I am. Trusting someone not to fuck me over. It pulls me to pieces."

"I said I wouldn't."

"I know you did, Adam. I know."

He's not used to talking them down. He's used to taping their mouth shut so he doesn't have to listen to them at all. A voice in his head tells him he's losing it, losing his edge, but fuck that, he doesn't care. 

All he cares about is the fact he feels human, for once, like Pinnochio turned real boy. 

Even Gabi didn't make him feel that. 

"I'd just like to go home now, Nigel."

“Alright. Okay. I'll take you home. I promised. I'll keep that promise. I won't lie to you, Adam, just like you won't lie to me. I fucking swear."

He's flustered. Nigel doesn't get flustered. It's not who he is. 

A stuttering wreck of a kid just unravelled him. 

"Just….grab your coat. It’s cold out. Don’t want you to catch pneumonia or some shit.”

“You can’t catch pneumonia from being cold. It’s cause by a bacterial infection or a…or a virus. That’s just one of the myths. Another myth is that only old people get pneumonia."

“Is there anything you don’t know, Einstein?”

Adam doesn’t respond. How to relate to people might be one, Nigel thinks. How to get by when in the grip of someone who doesn’t think like a human being at all.

Nigel struggles with the same thing. 

He leaves the apartment with the overwhelming feeling that, once he drops the kid off, he's losing something more valuable than any deal or any fucking partnership. It's worth is immeasurable, it's appeal both terrifying and second to none. 

Nigel doesn't lose. Not when it's in his very nature to win. 

Nigel can't kill Adam...but he also can't let him go for good and, though he's not at the stage of "if you love someone set them free" the sentiment is the same. He'll make him come back, by any means necessary.

He'll reel him in somehow, convince him he's worthy of his time and show him that, despite everything, he'll do him no harm. He must.

His head and his heart, for once, are in agreement on that one.


	5. Lunar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel ponders life.

It’s not nostalgia that draws Nigel to his old haunt that night. It’s a sense of restlessness he hasn’t felt in years, that niggling kind of emptiness that drives him to try to fill it, in some way. Maybe he’s trying to re-establish his sense of self, showing himself that he is a capable man, well feared and well-respected, and he has left his mark on this city. 

Maybe he’s just lost in his own thoughts. 

He drives past his old places of interest and pictures himself as a younger man, a man in his prime building himself up into something to behold. That wall there, there’s a cracked brick at about five and a half feet where he fractured a man’s skull following a perceived betrayal, left him in such a state it might’ve been better if he’d finished him off. The crack in his head healed but that wall still bears the scars of a night he’d probably like to forget.

There’s a bar up closed to the Financial District where he met a businessman from Sorrento and made fifty grand in less than an hour, money he blew on coke, prostitutes and designer leather shoes. 

That doorway, the one leading up to that plush Russian bar he almost owned, once upon a time, that’s where Gabi slapped him hard enough to leave a mark when she caught him with Daisy, that twenty-one year old cheerleader from Queens who side-lined as an escort and let him screw her whenever and wherever he liked. 

He still has that mark. It’s there in his right eyebrow, visible when he first gets out of the shower. 

Nigel doesn’t have many friends in these parts. Not anymore. Gone are the days when he was seen as a playboy and a firm prospect. He’s feared now, not quite revered as he hoped he’d be. People see him as a loose cannon, a man who cannot be trusted. He’s vowed to build himself back up, to fall back into prime position without the added stigma of being a ticking time bomb.

That’s what he _thought_ he wanted. 

He looks at the scars he's left on the world, bloody and cracked. Bold, yes, but not fucking beautiful. Not _beautiful_.

He pulls to a stop at a red light, sees two kids, drunk, sparring on a street corner, and he wonders where his life went. He looks at them, hit square with the realisation that he could be their father, and it bothers him in a way he never thought possible. 

He wonders what this is, where it came from. 

Then, he thinks of Adam, a simple man with a complex mind who only wants to be good and abiding and it _hurts_ him. Those kids hurt him, so young and full of possibility. He wants to scream at them to get out, to get away from this place, to take another turn and go the fuck home. There’s little hope for them, hanging out on these streets. There’s little hope for any kid with the underworld burning hot under their feet. 

He opens the window, on a whim, and he wonders what planets have aligned to make him say what he says. He gives in to the thought. He offers it to them in the best way he knows how. 

“Get the fuck out of here,” he tells them. "Leave.”

They stop and stare at him, their eyes full of seething distaste as they tell him “fuck you, old man.”

It occurs to him they do not know who he is. 

It also occurs to him he doesn’t see this as a slight on his notoriety because Al Capone he is not, never will be, and it’s only now he realises that doesn’t fucking _matter_.

He drives on, knows they won’t listen, knows he wouldn’t have listened either but at least he gave his ten cents worth and tried. 

Maybe something has irrevocably changed in him because a kid with a nervous disposition and a strange way of thinking put him in an unfamiliar place. Adam, in some ways, is a dangerous man, a man hard to read, hard to 'get'. He’s a man with his head in the clouds so he doesn't have to deal with the madness of this place; with scumbags and assholes like Nigel who want to tear it to pieces for their own gain. 

Adam is a man who can’t lie, won’t lie, and isn’t there some kind of pure gold in that? 

Isn’t that something worth emulating?

It's not quite epiphany but a caterpillar that burrows into his brain where it could eat away at it like it did Gabi's precious roof garden – or it could turn into a butterfly and fly away from all of the bullshit. 

At midnight he receives a text from his guys asking if he "took care of it". He can read the anxiety behind their words and it piques his own for just a second. Their fears are his fears, legitimate in their conception but not quite their festering continuation. They don’t ‘know’ Adam like he does, not as anything but a burden and a possible problem. 

Nigel sees so much more. 

He looks up at the middle of the night sky and it brings him up, raises him out of the sordid reverie. 

Adam taught him a lot on that short journey home. 

_"That's Ursa Minor. And there, that's Sirius, the Dog Star. That's the prominent star within Canis Major."_

_"I thought the Dog Star was Pluto."_

_"Pluto is a planet, not a star. Disney missed an opportunity to inadvertently teach children by not naming the dog Sirius, in my opinion."_

_"You think?"_

_"Yes."_

Adam’s hands had been flat on his knees, his voice a steady, rhythmic pace as he had reeled off the names of his trusty friends in the sky. There’d been a kind of ambience to it, Nigel had thought, a soothing kind of familiarity he could get used to because, as Adam had counted those stars as a way of regulating himself, he’d regulated Nigel at the same time. 

"People count sheep to get to sleep" he had said. "I count stars."

"Less abstract?"

"I prefer visual to imaginary."

"What you can see, not what you can only imagine."

For some, in some scenarios, what can only be imagined is more terrifying than what can be seen. What the human mind can imagine is so much more intimidating than what the eyes can see. Threats can be just as effective as physical harm, Nigel knows, but for Adam it didn't seem to be that way. 

In a universe full of carbon copy bastards and criminals, Adam is a rare and unique diamond; a star in himself. 

He texts back.

"It's all in hand. Don’t worry about him. Leave him to me."

He won't put a tail on Adam, won't have an underpaid underling keep watch over him to make sure he's not causing any trouble. 

He'll see to it himself. 

“Nobody touches him but me,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, but the warning in those worlds will be heard as loudly as if they’d been spoken in person. 

(*)

It's almost 1am when he slowly trails back on himself and ends up at Adam's place. Maybe it’s fear that drives him out here, the sick thought that maybe Adam called the cops, maybe he’s giving a statement right now in a steady voice to large, understanding police officers who will intimidate him with intensity but comfort him in the black and white belief that they are there to serve and protect. 

Maybe he came back because he can’t bear to be away or, indeed, because he wants to know the kid was real and not a figment of an overtired, overworked imagination that’s longing for something that isn’t dirty, for once. 

Maybe he’s just getting tired and old and he took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. 

Nigel is good at lying to himself. 

If he were being honest, it’s the fact he wants to see him again, even if only in abstract, even if only to look up at that big fucking window and imagine what’s behind it. 

He's alarmed to see the very shadow of Adam in the window, the light still shining, the halo of his hair casting his shape in the frame. He appears to be sitting up, perhaps on a bed, perhaps in a chair. It's been hours since Nigel deposited him, shaken but safe and still talking, at his place. He’d waited five minutes to ensure he got in safely, had watched as he’d turned on the light and settled in the very position he sits in now. 

It’s a kind of sixth sense that convinces Nigel he’s been frozen in that same spot for the past three hours. 

Somehow, this feels worse than anything because Adam had spoken of his routine. Laundry. Light exercise. Supper. To imagine him stuck like this, frozen to the spot as those deadlines and pass-times ran him by feels intrinsically _wrong_ to Nigel. 

It’s more than guilt, deeper than remorse. 

This feels life-altering. 

He doesn’t break in, though he knows that would be the easiest thing to do. Instead, he presses that tiny square button on the door, the one that reads ‘Raki, A’ and waits to be granted entry. He doesn’t normally afford people that courtesy and, should the answer be ‘no’ he would force his way in regardless. 

Not here. 

Not this time. 

“Raki Residence?” the disembodied voice says, and though he hasn’t known him for more than a minute, Nigel is struck by how different Adam sounds, like a light has been turned off or a tone has been swiftly changed to something low and otherworldly. He sounds tired but wired, exhaustion tinged with two things. Erratic energy and nervousness. Perhaps even fear. 

He answers the door still wearing his coat, the same coat he had on when Nigel dropped him off, and that same torn, bloodied shirt with the missing button they never managed to find. 

"I-I was overstimulated," Adam explains. "I couldn't sleep. Couldn’t move."

"Were you scared I would come back?"

For a moment it looks like Adam is going to say yes. Instead, he lowers his eyes even further and shakes his head. There are shadows of bruises where perfect skin one was and, God, someone’s going to pay for that when Nigel gets his hands on them. 

For now, he just puts his hand on Adam, not threatening, just steadying. 

Adam doesn’t push him away. He doesn’t look at him, but he doesn’t reject him either.

“It’s adrenaline, Adam. It’ll wear off eventually, then you’ll sleep like the fucking dead.”

“I can’t. Not even the stars are helping tonight.”

That’s what Nigel has done to him.

That’s what he needs to make up.

“Would you like to show them to me?” he asks. “With your telescope?”

Maybe he can give them back to him. He’d give him the fucking moon if he could. 

He sees the fear melt away, just a little, the ghost of excitement on Adam’s beautiful face.

“The sky is particularly clear tonight. It’s the perfect time of year for it. You can see so much. Planets, too. It's a full moon tonight. That's the best part of the lunar cycle."

The enthusiasm makes Nigel smile. 

“Can I come inside?” 

Adam doesn’t know how privileged he is that Nigel asked instead of forcing his way in. He also doesn’t know how he’s scaled barriers that stronger, more complex men have failed to scale with Nigel. 

He's achieved where many have struggled. 

“O-Okay,” he says, and that’s good. That’s enough.


	6. Perseus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nigel and Adam discuss business

(Bit of a shift in perspective here. Hope it’s okay.)

Adam feels calmer outside. With his hands adjusting the lens strength on his telescope and pointing it towards the universe, he feels as though he's found his place in the world again. He is teacher, not prey, a man in command of a weapon of his own.

“Can you see?” he asks. “Let me know if you need me to make it clearer for you. “

Nigel peers through the eyepiece as Adam directs and, where he had been explosive before, he's nothing but calm. He crouches down to get a closer look. It reminds Adam of one of his regulars at the museum, a fourteen year old girl named Lucia. She’s tall for her age, taller than Adam, and rather than adjust the stand she adjusts herself.

Nigel does the same. 

“Look at it up there. It's a fucking mess."

"A mess?"

"Looks that way to me. Like paint splatter. Or, blood splatter."

Adam hears the quiet amusement in Nigel's voice as he says those words and he wonders if he said that to shock him. People often do that. They make morbid jokes to try to get a rise. He’s been through this with Nigel before, figures it’s part of his personality. He’s probably one for political incorrectness too, racist jokes and sexist jokes that Adam doesn’t find particularly funny.

He prefers science jokes.

("Copernicus, young man, when are you going to come to terms with the fact that the world does not revolve around you?")

He says nothing.

"Maybe it was written in the stars that I’d meet someone tonight who made me realise the value of the human fucking race. Isn't that the kind of bullshit people talk about when it comes to astronomy?”

"Astrology. Astronomy is looking at the stars for a scientific perspective. Astrology is reading them for ladies magazines."

Nigel grins. It reminds Adam of a pitbull, all teeth and fierceness but still curious despite it's obvious power.

"Right."

"Also, I'm not valuable at all. Not in terms of financial worth. I barely cover the cost of my apartment. The balance of my bank account is $122 at the minute and that’s to cover my phone."

"Oh, you're worth something, Adam Raki. You're fucking worth something. That's what the splatters are telling me."

Adam’s father had a girlfriend, once, a woman lined up to be his new mother when his dad thought that a woman’s touch might be just what Adam needed. She told him his rudeness made her question humanity and his ‘tantrums’ made her lose the will to live. His father, after asking her to leave. told him that nobody should have that kind of responsibility placed on their shoulders, let alone someone as prized and wonderful as his son.

He smiles at the memory and, in turn, at Nigel himself.

One of the first social interactions he learned to mimic and implement was that one.

“Stars are exploding balls of hydrogen and helium. You might as well read tea leaves. It's just as arbitrary. All foretelling and superstition is."

"Tell that to my darling Hispanic friends. They step on a crack in the floor and it’s a billion Hail Mary's. Which one is that?"

Nigel points at the most vivid star he can see.

"That one? That’s Betelgeuse. That was my dad’s favourite because he loved the movie with the same name, but that wasn’t about Orion’s brightest. That was about a dead man with stressful clothes and terrible hair.”

“Stressful clothes?”

“Yes. His pants were very loud.”

“So, you didn’t like that movie?”

Adam rarely likes movies. He likes movies about Stephen Hawking. He loved Mission to Mars. He enjoyed 2001: A Space Odyssey until the computer turned rogue and decided it knew better than the humans.

He liked Finding Nemo, though he doesn't know why, and as a little boy he wanted to be Elroy Jetson…

“I generally prefer documentaries. Of course, my favourite movie as a kid was Space Camp because I always wanted to go but my dad said he could barely afford my retainer, so I had to make do with binoculars and a Lego replica of the Starship Enterprise.”

Nigel laughs, though Adam doesn’t understand why. He laughs so hard his eyes wrinkle up and it makes Adam wonder how old he is. He could be thirty-eight. He could be fifty. He could be anything in between. 

When he tells him he’s a funny guy he can only smile that mimic-smile and nod his head, though he’s not ‘in’ on the joke and it makes him feel a little lost when he pretends to be. 

"See? This isn't so hard, Adam. You're better company than you think. You’re making me laugh. Funny ‘haha’, not funny ‘peculiar’."

That’s a difference from the norm. He is usually the peculiar one. 

For Adam, it’s a difficult scenario. His life is a series of familiar interactions, patterns and sequences all carefully mapped out and orchestrated with meticulous accuracy. It’s always been his go-to technique when it came to controlling his condition. His diaries are painstakingly precise, his schedules planned to the very second. There’s security in the routine, something especially important to him now that his father has died. Dad was his safety net, a position that Harlan now takes up exclusively, but there was always going to come a time for Adam to live unsupported and it feels like that time has arrived.

None of this is usual, none of it planned and accounted for. Adam didn’t even have beer in the fridge, which he’d learned over time was ‘a must’ when in company.

Nigel is an anomaly; a glitch in his system. He’s not a man for whom figurative language is prevalent in his thoughts but, if he were to liken Nigel to anything he would be an asteroid to a satellite, a powerful mound that pummels though at vast command and speed and sends the machine off its trajectory. Human beings are not machines, though, and their worlds are not organised by lines of code and running programmes. That’s what his father used to tell him before the diagnosis, before the doctors had written up their notes and performed their tests and proclaimed him to be ‘special’. Special Ed for a Special Boy, that’s how it used to be phrased, but for Adam it was a misrepresentation of the word.

The very definition of ‘special’ is superior and unique but there were people in his class who did not know how to tie their own shoelaces and whose level of Physics was less than that of a kindergarten child. Adam learned that ‘special’ meant something entirely different when applied to people like him. It meant ‘defective’.

When his routines were shifted or altered as a child he would turn inward, a kind of mental implosion where his system went into shutdown and the only thing that brought him back to cohesion was a dark room and a weighted blanket. As he got older people would tell him he needed to ‘learn how to think outside of the box’ and ‘go with the flow’ but that only confused Adam further because, to him, the mind is housed within the brain and the brain is not box shaped at all. ‘The flow’ was too abstract to be perceived in any solid sense at all.

It’s different now. Adam has adapted and implemented his own self-soothing bylaws. He doesn’t often implode, not anymore, but the sequence of events that made up this night were something even an NT would struggle with, he’s sure, so this little tremble in his hand is nothing to do with ASD and everything to do with Nigel.

That’s what he tells himself when he hands the other man a mug of chamomile tea with a wrist that’s shaking so hard he almost drops it on the floor. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m not used to company this late at night. My dad never had company later than eleven and Harlan knows my schedule."

“It’s fine. Like I said, adrenaline's a spiteful bitch. Just be glad you're not pointing a gun. You'd shoot yourself in the foot if you were holding one of those."

When Nigel tells him he’s doing good he doesn’t take it as patronising the way Harlan might. He just takes it as gentle praise.

“If I’d been through all the shit you’d had to deal with tonight I’d be a wreck. Balls in a fucking vice grip. That's my fault. I'm sorry for that."

He holds his hands out, his palms facing Adam in what he understands must be some kind of supplication. His eyes are less intense, less painfully invasive and, when Adam forces himself to meet them with his own he sees only imploring honesty. 

"I'm really fucking sorry. I came here because I couldn't stand myself for scaring the shit out of you. If you fucking knew me you'd know that's not me. I don't give a fuck. I take my pound of flesh and I go out dancing afterwards. Not a care in the world. But, not this time."

It's only now that he looks, Adam realises Nigel looks different. His hair is parted on the other side, shirt open and loose. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows the way people wear them when the weather is hot but they can’t take their clothes off because that's the rules. The look would be described in dress-code speak as ‘smart casual’ where it had been ‘smart’ before.

He understands this may be Nigel’s attempt at making him feel more comfortable.

Eventually, pulls his head away from the telescope entirely and looks at Adam, defeated.

“Ah, they all look the fucking same. How do you tell the difference?”

"I know them all by heart. They’re really very different once you familiarise yourself with them. They each have their own unique place within a constellation. They’re instantly recognisable."

Nigel doesn’t understand that these stars were Adam’s lifeline for as long and as far back as he can remember and that, in the same way Nigel understands criminal hierarchies and, it seems, the unique skillsets of European soccer players, Adam understands the Universe.

“They’re all unique to me. Just like people.”

“Only the stars can’t talk back.”

“They can’t talk at all.”

When Nigel leans across to touch him he is momentarily alarmed by the contact but he's coming to learn that Nigel is a tactile man and that he expresses himself in ways Adam will never understand. He's learned his touch is not a threat and so allows it because it seems to keep Nigel calm and Adam wants that more than anything. He just wants calm. No more yelling. No more agitation. Just…calm. 

“You and me, we can talk. You might not know people like you think you do, Adam, but I can fucking talk to you. You know how long it’s been since I found someone I can talk to?”

"No. But...I guess that was a rhetorical question."

"It's been a long fucking time, kid. I don't want to lose that. I really don't want to fucking lose it. DIdn’t realise I was missing it until now. I don’t’ have to fucking hide with you. I feel like I could be the dick that I am, deep down, and you wouldn’t give a shit."

“You know where I live,” Adam says, repeating Nigel’s earlier words. “You know my name. That gives you - ”

“ – power over you? Yeah, well, now we’ve got power over each other. I didn’t know what I was saying when I said that, Adam. I’m just not used to dealing with people who aren’t Hell-bent on screwing me over.”

“I’m not – “

“I know that. I know. But, when you surround yourself with fucking trash you expect everyone to be the same. Like your stars. Who the fuck knows, eh?”

“The stars aren’t mine, and they’re not the same. I could explain the differences to you, if you want, but it’d take a very long time.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m good with your word.”

Nigel smiles, and it’s not what would be referred to as a snake smile. It makes him look younger, if at all possible, those lines on his face softening, along with the hardness of those deep hazel eyes.

He looks like a different person, another man entirely.

In the distant corners of Adam's mind, he feels almost like he could be a friend. 

"So...can you show me Saturn with this thing? I always loved the fucking ring on that motherfucker."

(*)

At 2am, partway through Adam's introduction to Pegasus, Nigel takes a phone call.

A realignment seemingly occurs.

If a mood change could be felt, this would be a shining example of such a thing. It's not a colour, not a red mist or a black cloud. It's just a bristling tension that is almost tangible. It seems to pull at the hairs on Adam's arms, on the back of his neck. It roots him to his spot as he tries to evaluate where this might go. 

"Are you serious?" Nigel asks his caller. "You're bothering me for this?"

His body becomes rigid, his knuckles so tight they're almost bursting through the skin. The veins in his neck seem to have doubled in size and, as he shifts from foot to foot it's like he's limbering up to fight. He paces, a tactic to let off steam. As the call goes on for longer, his voice gets louder. Adam’s hands start twitching, painfully close to covering his ears again. He doesn’t, not yet. He waits it out. 

"What? You thought _what?_ Well, aren't you a prized cocksucker, eh?"

The mouthpiece is pressed so firm to Nigel’s lips his voice must be muffled to the person on the other end of the line, Adam is sure if it. He wants to tell him that his voice will carry further if he pulls it away but he doesn’t think that would be appreciated.

“Do I seem like a charity to you? Full price or no fucking deal, you got that, asshole? I have no layaway option. This isn't a second hand fucking station wagon. It’s high-quality shit. Best of the best. Cream of the fucking crop. You want premium? You fucking pay premium. Tell him _that_."

Adam tries not to eavesdrop but it's difficult when voices are raised and tones are set. He can't help hearing what Nigel says any more than he can help hearing his neighbour's parrot screech when it's looking for attention or, when the noise carries in the summer, Janet and Alan from 2B engaging in coitus with their windows wide open. 

Nigel's voice lowers. His eyes dart like he's trying to avoid unseen scrutiny. Adam knows that look. It's the look people get when they don't wish to be caught. 

"Just… give him a gram and tell him to stop wasting my fucking time. And don't call me again. I told you I was taking care of some things. You're missing the point of our arrangement and I’m not prepared to tell you again, alright? Alright. La revedere."

When Nigel hangs up the phone he mutters foreign words under his breath. Adam doesn't understand them. They could be any number of languages. Adam knows Spanish and German and it's neither of those things. It sounds Eastern European. Some of the sounds could be Russian, maybe Czech but he couldn't be sure. Nigel calls it the 'mother tongue'.

“Romanian,” he says. “I’m from Bucharest. I’m sorry about that. Sometimes my crew can't make a fucking decision. They're like small children with no brains but…what can you do?"

Adam would've thought that obvious. He tells Nigel as much. 

"You could find more decisive people."

"Find more decisive people. Like it's that fucking simple."

"Isn't it?"

Nigel laughs at that, pats Adam on the arm. 

"Such a fucking innocent."

That _is_ patronising.

Nigel shakes his head, clearly still agitated by the phone call, and when he lights up a cigarette he looks at Adam intently as if he's waiting for something. Adam doesn't know what so he ignores it. 

"You mind?" he asks finally, tilting his head towards the instrument of slow death in his hands. Adam says no. It's not a confined space. Passive smoking isn't an issue. He has no grounds got refusal aside from moral ones 

"I'm trying to expand my business. I've taken on some people. I'm starting to realise if you want something done to need to do it your-fucking-self. Too many cooks spoil the fucking meatloaf."

"The soup"

"Huh?"

"The proverb is "too many cooks spoil the soup." 

"Right, right. You're a real piece of fucking work, aren’t you? _Soup_ , then."

"It doesn’t really matter. Meatloaf would work too. The food type is interchangeable. The meaning remains the same."

He tells Nigel that some people work better by themselves. Some people are hawks, he says, rather than wolves and orca. Wolves hunt and work in packs, orca in pods. They share problem solving and operate a hierarchy for when it comes to reaping the rewards of their actions. 

“There are those who excel as part of a group and those who see the value in solitude. I prefer to work on my own. That way, there can be no misunderstandings and no office politics that I can't figure out because it's all sarcasm and double meanings."

The language of interpersonal relationships has always bewildered him, left him floundering and confused.

It seems Nigel suffers the same inadequacy. 

"Everything is done to my own standards."

"Yeah, you have a point. It's just...I can't be fucking everywhere. I’m not a young man any more. If I lose ground some other bastard steps in to my patch. I just can't work with these retards. I give them a chance to rectify their mistakes and they fuck up all the more. How hard is it to sell a block?”

"I don't know. I've never sold a block. "

"Do you even know what a block is?"

People assume him stupid approximately 85% of the time. Adam wishes, above all things, for that to change. He taps his hand against the side of the telescope in what those 'in the know' would recognise as Fibonacci, which is not stupid by any means. Adam can recite pie to more digits than anyone he knows, which is also not stupid. He could fix a laptop in less time than it would take for most people to cook a TV dinner. Of course he knows what a block is. He also knows that 'a line' isn't just something that forms in stores and banks. 

"A block of cocaine, heroin, amphetamine or some other drug, I imagine. I'm not Forrest Gump, you know?"

"Of course you're fucking not. You're smarter than that prick. And, I really shouldn't be telling you these things but...I don't know, you've got this biblical quality to you. Like a weird priest or some shit. I look at you and I just...talk. Scares the shit out of me."

"My dad said I was a good listener because I don't interrupt and I give good advice because I don't let emotion cloud my judgement. Priests judge. I could never be one of those."

He’s a man of science, not a man of God. 

"So, what do you suggest someone in my situation should do, then, Mr Fucking Sensible? Since I can't trust Diego with a piece of fucking string and Marcel's balls deep in this third divorce and doesn't know his ass from his elbow. What would be the best course of action?"

Adam thinks about this for a moment. He weighs up all the options to hand and comes up with the least problematic."

"Selling the block yourself would be the obvious choice."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. Taking into account your associates being the problem, the logical thing would be to remove them. You know all the variables, you have a set price you're non-negotiable on and you know your market. You also have security, if you choose to implement it. All corners are covered."

"Huh."

"You'd also get to keep all of the proceeds yourself because there would be no percentage split. It makes sense to sell it yourself. The extra work would be rewarded with additional cash and, considering your watch probably cost you thousands of dollars, I imagine cash is something you value very much."

Nigel looks impressed. He is leaning back a little as if to take in all of Adam. It's an appraisal, and the result is positive. When he nods his head it's further evidence of his approval. 

"Are you encouraging me to _commit_ crime, Adam Raki?"

That's not what he's doing at all. He's just answering a question. 

"You asked me what I suggested someone should do in your situation. I gave you an objective response."

"And, you're not going to tell me how shitty it is to be selling coke in the first place?"

"My opinion on the matter wouldn’t make a difference. It's who you are."

There is another shift when Adam says those words. He wonders if it's defensiveness on Nigel's part. He looks a little saddened, perhaps even offended. 

That wasn't Adam's intention. 

"I'm more than just that, kid. It's just what I do. It's what I've always done. Dealing and gang banging are the only things I was ever fucking good at, but...it's not all black and white. I'm a crazy motherfucker but I wasn't always this way."

Adam nods his head. He gets that. Harlan taught him about this. He knows it by heart. 

"I see the law as black and white. I see a lot of things as black and white because it's easier for my brain to process things in that way but, like I already told you, Harlan taught me that people have their reasons for doing what they do. I might not understand the grey areas but I can appreciate the fact they exist.”

"Yeah. You're not wrong. I’ve lived my fucking life in the grey areas."

"He also told me it's never too late to change. People change all the time. _He_ changed."

He was on the pathway to Hell, he said, that same pathway that was paved with good intentions. He couldn't see an end to the mess he had made of his life.

Then, he met Martha. 

"What made him do that?" Nigel asks, and his voice is so uncharacteristically quiet it can barely be heard. "What world-altering event dragged him from the shit pile?"

"The love of a good woman and a loyal dog named Buster. Pussy and pooch, that’s what he said."

It really was as simple as that.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chance encounter?

Nigel wakes up feeling irrevocably different, as if something inside of him has been carved out. He has been excavated, like one might a pumpkin to make a man out of it on October 31st. He has straw for arms and a cavern in his chest where his confidence used to be and he believes, if he were to look in the mirror now, that what looks back might well be a scarecrow.

He is a hollow man. A shadow. He is an empty space waiting to be filled, though with what he does not know. All he knows is that there’s an itch he can’t quite scratch and it’s burrowing deeper and deeper, an itch with a young man’s name on it because for the first time in years, fucking _years_ , he feels he might actually have a choice.

Nigel resigned himself to being the best of the ugly best because it was the hand fate had dealt him. He built on it because he surrounded himself with people who looked up to that. They all strived to be him or be like him and they all patted him on the back and shook his hand because he’s good at what he does.

There’s no good in what he’s good at.

There’s no pride in selling junk to desperate little men and women who want to poison themselves slowly so that he can afford his expensive cars and designer watches.

It’s quiet in this room. As the sun floods in through curtains he never bothered to close he doesn’t feel enlightened. No, he doesn’t feel that. He just feels…unsatisfied.

He wonders if this is a mid-life crisis stabbing him in the chest and gouging at him from the inside. Nigel’s life didn’t begin at 40, no, it just went on the way it had before; dangerous, involved, razor-edge disobedience. All of that just continued. When younger men came into his path he did not question it. They valued his experience. They called upon his wisdom and knowledge of the way things work. He felt like a Lord and a God, all at once. A father to the fucking underworld.

He doesn’t feel that any more.

As he takes a deep breath, he swears he can still smell Adam’s scent on him, that clean, fresh lavender scent that’s tinged, only slightly, with the musk of fevered fear.

 _”Lavender is used in homeopathy. It has both anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties. It helps with my migraines by relaxing the tension that comes with them. It’s also very valuable when it comes to relieving stress and insomnia.”_

He smiles at the impromptu lesson and realises it’s the thought of Adam’s voice that calms him, not just the scent of him. The look of his face and the pace of his movement. The ordered way he conducted himself, even in the midst of fear. It all just appeals to Nigel.

He hadn’t wanted to leave him, though he knew that staying any longer would have been selfish on his part and uncomfortable on Adam’s. As the adrenaline had worn down and his eyes had begun to close of their own accord, Nigel had excused himself.

They parted on good terms, Adam promising to keep his word and his silence, Nigel thanking him for his cooperation. When he’d coyly informed Nigel that he’d had a good time once the nerves died down and the panic subsided, Nigel had taken it as green.

“Would you like to do it again sometime?” he’d asked, and he’s fucked if he knows why it was so hard to say the words. He usually delivers with confidence. He wants, he gets. Women love it. Associates respect it. People trust it. He’s never been hesitant in his life but there’s something about associating with the good of this world that leaves Nigel off kilter. Hesitant, even.

“Yes,” Adam had responded. “There’s a super blood moon eclipse this weekend. I have special permission to stay over at the observatory to document it. I’m writing a paper for an online magazine." 

“A super blood moon eclipse. That sounds fancy.”

Adam had nodded his head very seriously and informed Nigel it was a rarity, incredibly beautiful. A powerful sight.

He might well have been describing himself.

“I was planning on going alone because Harlan has a date with a woman from Harlem, which he finds amusing, but if you’d like to see the eclipse you can come.”

Nigel had thought, at that point in time, that there’s no place he’d rather be in the world than with this simple little man with his simple little plans looking at his greatest love in the world.

“That would be fucking great.”

Now, alone, Nigel looks at his cellphone to see if there is anywhere he needs to be today and it's much of the same. He has a meet with one of his weapons suppliers at midday. He's looking at bulk purchasing, knows he can shift them easily on the downlow. The guy's a neurotic fuck so he'll have to drive to New Haven to meet the cocksucker but the four hour round trip will be worth it when he checks his balance at the end of the year. Guns are hot. They sell fast in NYC, not so fast in Connecticut. Wellsby's too much of a coward to shift them himself so he settles for acting as middle man for a cut of the profits. He still lives with his mother. She thinks he deals on Ebay, not the black market and certainly not in the weapons trade. 

Tonight, one of the Petrov twins is having his annual party at his club and Nigel is expected to attend as an associate and a ‘regular’. Time was, it was the highlight of his year, a veritable fest of drink, drugs, business and women. They set up a ring in the corner where guys let off pent up steam and fight it out, if needs be, and people take casual bets on who might deck the other.

Designer clothes and Absolut Elyx. Skin and sex. Lights that burn his retinas. The best of the best celebrity DJs. David Guetta. Calvin Harris. No expense is fucking spared. Nigel would usually draw the night to a close with a few lines of coke, a blow job and a promise of more to come. He would walk out on top of a universe he created and Lords upon, fucked up and happy. 

It's an alarming thought, the fact he doesn't want to go. He isn't inclined to want to watch the city's debauched pissing in figurative corners to mark their territory and talking about how good it is in the badlands these days. That's bullshit. Simple truth is, things are tight and parties such as that are just over- indulgent pats on the back for no reason whatsoever. 

He wonders if another little heir has been squeezed out, the fourth in as many years. 

"Congratulations, Dimitar," he says aloud, in imitation of what he knows will be coming,"you fathered another bastard. You must be so fucking proud of your jizz for having such bastard making capabilities."

What he wants to do instead is sit on a bench in the middle of Central Park with a flask of coffee and a homemade brownie looking for the fucking raccoons Adam insists live there. He wants another lesson in animal geography, star alignment and whatever other tangent the kid wants to go off on because at least it's fucking honest. If he hears one more far-fetched bullshit story about how Dimitar Petrov has wined and dined Angelina Jolie or sold a fucking car to Tom fucking Hanks he’s pretty sure he’ll garrotte somebody. 

He realises something he hasn't realised for a long, long time. 

Guns. Cash. Drugs. Power. Those things don't make a man. He's too old to be that man, now. 

Maybe life is beginning at forty-seven.

Maybe there’s fucking hope for him yet. 

(*)

"Where are we going? You've done this drive a thousand times, Nigel. Are you stoned?"

Nigel knows this isn’t the right way. He knows he took a wrong turn about three blocks back. 

He also knows why. 

"Shut the fuck up," he answers calmly, adjusting his rear-view mirror so he can make eye contact with the man In the back of his vehicle. “You remember what happened to Darko?”

Darko is dead, died by a bullet from Nigel’s own gun. The reason? He talked too much. He put too many worms in people's ears. Nigel had loved that guy but love only runs so deep between men both after the same thing. He shot him in the face two hours after Darko sold him out with a pack of lies and a running commentary. 

“Yeah," Mario says. "Yeah, I remember.”

Mario is already sporting a swollen cheekbone, payback for the blood that ruined Adam’s favourite shirt, but Nigel knows the guy won’t be looking for retaliation of his own. Ortega knows to keep his mouth shut. Nigel had fired him a warning shot when he’d mentioned the ‘preppy kid from last night’ and asked if there’d be any comeback, wondered aloud whether he’d talked until his fucking heart stopped or if Nigel had put a sock in it when he choked the life out of him.

The warning shot hadn’t gotten through.

The fist had.

He sits quietly in the passenger seat with a face matching his brother’s playing what appears to be Angry Birds on his phone. Every so often he breaks his imposed silence to laugh at the guys calling in to the radio talkshow complaining about their marriages.

Sometimes, Nigel wonders if he’s more babysitter than anything else, though he figures everything related to the way things are would leave him with a sour, jaded taste at the minute.

“Why are we even here? This isn’t our patch. I don’t think I’ve ever been down this way.”

“Don’t try me, Mario. There’s a knife in the jockey box and you talk so much fucking shit I'm starting to wonder if you deserve a tongue."

"Okay, okay. I was just asking, homie."

Nigel knows how juvenile it is driving down this road, this road which his so far in the opposite direction they might as well be heading to Philly. It's out of character when taking into account the reason for the detour. 

The truth is, he just wants to catch a glimpse and if not a glimpse something physical and visible just to prove to him that Adam exists at all.

His guys don’t need to know why they’re heading this way but to shut them up, to keep them quiet, he tells them he thought they were being followed. He knows it will eat into their paranoia and have them itching in their seats. He also knows it will throw them off the scent.

“Just trying to throw them off,” he says. “After the example we made of that useless piece of shit yesterday you don’t know who might be on our fucking tail. So, please, do me a favour and stop fucking questioning me.”

“Okay. Alright. Shit. My bad.”

He knows Adam 's routine suggests at this time he would be out for his midday walk. He likes to go to the bakery two blocks from his apartment and pick up a brioche, which he’ll eat with an organic fruit juice or a weak coffee. He’ll buy a newspaper from the convenience store that’s closest to the bakery along with a packet of Tic Tacs, which he’ll eat periodically throughout the day. He’ll sit on a bench to read his newspaper, the same bench every time where sometimes his much-mentioned friend will join him and they’ll talk about their day. Then he’ll walk home and catch a couple of shows on the Discovery Channel before it’s time to get ready for work.

Nigel feels a distinct disappointment settling inside of him when he doesn’t spot Adam, though he knows already it was a long shot. Still, it puts him in a sombre mood which may well carry through at his meet. When Ortega tells him to get on his fucking game he doesn’t even call him out for his insubordination because he knows the kid’s right.

“You’ve been moping like a bitch with a skimmed knee since we left NYC. What’s the problem?”

“I’m fucking fine, alright?” he says, though he knows he’s not fooling anyone.

You can’t bullshit a bullshitter after all.

(*)

Time moves fast. Nigel, it seems, doesn’t move with it.

“What the Hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like someone shit in your drink, Nigel. Some of the guys are talking.”

He’s sitting alone in a booth in the corner of the club. Each and every woman with the nerve to approach him has been met with silence at best, deadpan insults at worst. Pogatetz, a fellow Romanian who he’s known for twenty years and hated for nineteen of them, shoves a bag of coke in his direction almost violently, as if his uncooperative mood is a stain on _his_ evening.

“Do a fucking line. Loosen up. Stop looking at people like they’re stains on your mattress, you got that?”

“What’s it to you, _muist_?”

Insulting a person in English is one thing. Insulting them in Romanian gives it that extra edge.

“What’s it to me, asshole? You’re giving me a bad name. People assume I’m working with you. If you give off a bad impression? They walk away with a bad impression of me.”

Nigel smiles, though it doesn’t meet his eyes.

“You do that all by yourself.”

He looks at this man, this silly little man with his slick back hair and his coloured contact lenses and his designer fucking suit, all trying to look young and acceptable and _desirable_ , and he feels instantly sorry for him.

“What’s your problem?”

“What’s my problem? Ah, what’ s my problem? You ever think you want something more, Luka? You ever look around at all this fucking posturing and think you want something, I don’t know…. _better_?”

“What’s better than this? Money, Nigel. Women. _Notoriety,_ , brother.”

“Notoriety. Jesus fucking Christ, you don’t even know the meaning of the word. Look around. All the glitz. All the false fucking bastards dancing around with shit in their heads and fists for fucking brains. It makes me sick. Just… _look_ at it. ”

Look at it, with its pink flashing lights and its mirrored ceilings and its tight assed little whores kicking their legs from swings suspended from the Heavens. Look at the grown men all salivating over twenty year old girls with pert tits and two braincells between them.

There’s not a decent human being among them.

“The good Lord rained down sulphur on better places than this.”

He knows the twins will take it as an insult when he downs the vodka in one and leaves the glass on the table…

“Have a good night, you fucking moron.”

…when he picks up his coat and leaves without speaking a single word to them, his illustrious hosts.

He knows full well people will talk and he’d love to say he gives a fuck but he’d be lying.

He has lied so much in his life.

“Nigel - “ Pogatetz calls out after him. “For fuck’s sake, _Nigel_ …”

Nigel doesn’t even look back.

There’s nothing to see here anyway.

(*)

The following afternoon he has better luck.

It’s not that he’s following him, not even that he’s trying to force himself on the kid. It’s just that he felt compelled to be here in the same way a woman feels compelled to attend a football game knowing the guy she wants to fuck is going to be there and she might just catch a glimpse of him. He hasn't done this kind of thing since Gabi and he doesn't even want to think about what that means. 

It feels juvenile and he knows it. 

Nigel watches from a distance because he doesn’t want to scare Adam, doesn't want to wilfully impose on his personal space. He’s not even sure he wants to talk to him, not here, not like this. He just wanted to make sure he was okay, that unease settling deep in his bones when he thinks of the bruises that will certainly paint his face, the cuts that are only days into healing.

He’d give anything to wipe them away, has done his best to balance out the universe on Adam's behalf. 

When people tell him there’s something off with him he knows it to be true. He's been both recklessly, needlessly evasive and shockingly disrespectful. He had to contend with a 3am phone call from the more volatile Petrov twin questioning his loyalty, respect and state of mind and asking if it felt good offending them last night. The old Nigel would promise to make it up to them claiming he was wasted, drunk or stoned - but Nigel had simply shrugged his shoulders and told them to think what they wanted of him because they're too fucking clueless to figure him out. 

He hung up on them before they had a chance to curse the ground he walks on but he expects they will let him know at length how deeply offended they are. 

Nigel knows, deep down, that this is compulsive, irrational behaviour. It’s just this feeling he can’t shake, this overwhelming need to be close to this kid because, Christ, there’s such little goodness in his world and a little fucking taste has got him hooked. It’s probably illegal and if he looked up the definition of stalking this might just fall under it - but he means Adam no harm.

He just wants to circle his orbit quietly, without being seen. Just for a little while.

Adam's on the park bench, brioche in hand, paper cup of coffee in between his knees. By the looks of it, he’s reading the financial supplement that comes free with his newspaper. He doesn’t looks sad in his solitude, looks perfectly at ease in a way that Nigel never was. He has always surrounded himself with assholes and cunts because it felt better than being alone. 

Adam, it seems, thrives in his own head. 

The bruises on his face look darker, now, worse than they did before, and that stirs something up like nothing else in Nigel. It makes him look like an abused child; like one of those little beaten kids on TV who the viewing public are asked to give a few dollars a month to save as if that would even make a dent. The hat he’s wearing covers the subtle swirls of his hair and the gloves on his hands are fingerless, so as to allow him the sense of touch he values so much. It’s not particularly cold but Nigel remembers how Adam had pulled on a coat the minute the temperature had dropped even slightly, shivering as if the icy tendrils of winter were touching him and no one else. 

Nigel runs hot.

He gets the feeling Adam is the opposite.

It’s amazing how much better Nigel feels just for seeing him, that little bright spark in his dim fucking world, though that feeling fades when Adam, possibly sensing the eyes on him, looks up and sees him. 

He wasn't supposed to see him. 

It's not strange, not _really_. This is a public park and Nigel has every right to be here. He hopes that what Adam reads into the sudden shift in his body is something other than a threat because it's not that. 

It's earth-shattering embarrassment. 

"Nigel?"

He wants to turn away and pretend he hadn't been caught. For Nigel, embarrassment often fades away and leaves anger in it's place as he tries to turn the feeling into something fierce and self protecting. 

This time he just feels out of his depth because he can't assert his dominance over Adam so as to save face. 

He can only tread lightly. 

"Hey, Adam. I was, uh, I was in the fucking neighbourhood."

"You were? Isn't it a little out of your way?"

"No, not really," Nigel lies, before wondering what the fuck's the point.

He surrenders. Nigel never surrenders. 

This is a week of firsts. 

"Actually, yeah. You got me. I was hoping to bump into you. I remembered you saying this was part of your routine."

"It is. Would you like to join me?"

"Uh, sure. Sure."

Nigel approaches as one might a colt. He half expects Adam to break into a run. He doesn't. He looks at Nigel strangely, as if his behaviour confuses him. 

"You can sit down."

"Didn't want to butt into your seat."

"This isn't my bench. Plus, it's a free country."

Its funny how it makes him feel, being trusted into this sacred circle of Adam's afternoon routine. It feels more exclusive than being embraced by NY's finest crime lords. 

"That it is, Adam."

"Although...my boss says you wouldn't think so sometimes with all the censoring and political correctness that's going on. She says they should bring out a book of what you can and can't say despite the first amendment."

"She's not wrong there."

Between the gangs and the factions, the Mexicans, the Russians and the African Americans, Nigel has noticed the change. What used to be seen as harmless jeering and banter has taken on new meaning, now. Everything is an issue. A word can have more power than a bullet or the blade of a knife. The tongue is mightier than the machete. 

It's a scary world.

"So, I take it you didn't lose your job?"

"No. She was very understanding, just like you said."

"What did you tell her about your face?"

Adam reaches to absently to touch the painful spot near his eyebrow, trailing his finger down to touch his lip. It's probably wrong to think that the black and blue bring out the colour of his eyes but Nigel never claimed to be clean 

"I told her someone hit me."

"And, what did she say?"

"She got really upset and started crying. I told her I was the one who got hit, not her, but that just made her cry harder. I don't understand women. They're very emotional."

"I don't think anyone does, kid."

He imagines Adam showing up like this, broken and blemished. Marked. Assaulted. He imagines how that would've gutted her. 

Looking at it now, it guts him.

"Mario sends his apologies. I evened the score for you."

"You hit him?"

Nigel shrugs. 

"He deserved it."

"Violence should never be an answer to violence, Nigel. Speaking of which, Harlan wants me to take self defence classes, especially since I work late sometimes. He has that wrong."

"He does?"

"Yes. Did you know that 52% of violent crime takes place between 6am and 6pm? I work outside of those hours so, statistically speaking, I am less likely to encounter violence."

Nigel would say that most of his own violent activities take place in the night so he, at least, is part of the minority. 

"Surprisingly, I didn't know that."

He wishes he wasn't a statistic at all. 

"I told him he didn't need to worry about me. He needs to worry about himself. Black men are more likely to be a victim than white men, although he's aged out of the higher numbered stat because he's over fifty. He does live in a low income, high crime neighbourhood, though. He told me I need to get a dog like his."

"You want a fucking dog?""

"I'm more a cat person. Cats are a lot like Aspies."

"Independent, intelligent and affectionate on their own terms."

Come to think of it, Adam is decidedly feline. 

"You're not wrong there, Adam. You're not fucking wrong."

Nigel wonders if he ever is.

They sit quietly for a few moments, Adam staring out into the distance at the crowds passing by, Nigel sitting next to him. There is no hidden agenda here. There is no feathers ruffles or balls on show. 

It's just company. 

"So, what are you doing?" he finally asks. "Do you just...sit here?"

"I'm people watching."

Nigel does it all the time, searching for weakness, looking for vulnerability.

"Anyone in particular?"

He always has a mark, always has a target.

Adam never does.

"Just people."

He looks wistful, kind of like he's wondering what life would be like if he was part of that or if he really understood it. It seems he's forever on the outside looking in. It seems outstandingly sad. But, maybe Nigel could help him bridge the gap somewhat.

He points at a man and woman in the distance. The woman is dressed too nicely for this time of day, the man attentive to a default, but there's something in his body language that makes him appear uneasy. 

"Those two? They're having an affair. And the bald guy behind? That's the investigator the guy's wife hired to sniff it out."

"How do you know that?"

Nigel shrugs. 

"Just guessing. The lady with the red hair and the huge tits? She's a prostitute. She's on her way back from an all night session and the look on her face means she hit big."

That one isn't a guess.

Nigel can smell a hooker a mile away. 

"That old guy over there? He's just lost his wife. See the way he's twisting his wedding band? And the kid over by that tree? He's skipping school because there's a guy in his class who beats the living shit out of him. See the bruises on his face?"

"They kind of look like mine."

Adam listens intently as Nigel dreams up back stories for the people they watch, some laced in truth, the rest pure fabrication. He says he's not so good at abstract thinking; that his imagination doesn't really work that way. 

"C'mon, Adam. Give it a try."

"Okay. That man over there, he's a doctor," he says. "Pediatrics. He works at Brookdale."

Nigel smiles at the effort. 

"See? You're playing."

"No. I just noticed the cartoon bear on his stethoscope and his briefcase has the name of the medical centre on the side. I wasn't really playing. I was playing along."

He smiles, those beautiful eyes creasing at the corners just a little. Nigel feels it as though it's a physical thing; a jarring sensation in the middle or his chest. 

He doesn't want to stop it, probably couldn't if he even tried. 

"You notice everything, don't you? Every little fucking detail."

"Not everything,"'Adam clarifies. "Nobody could notice everything, unless they had an eidetic memory or a photographic mind. I notice enough."

"Just enough?"

"Yes. Just enough."

Enough is good, Nigel thinks. Enough is great.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Harlan discuss.

"I met an interesting man this week.”

“What kind of man?”

“A tall man. Probably in his forties."

He says it casually as he's learned is the ‘done thing’, though he's distracted by the letters in his green plastic holder. He's trying to find a word that incorporates the letter Z from what’s already on the board. Zion would be a possibility but he's short an O. 

He wishes he had the correct letters for ‘Zodiac’.

"He drives a sports car."

"I'll drive a sports car one day, just you wait."

"You can't afford a sports car, Harlan."

Harlan looks at him as if he's exasperated and accuses Adam of being a spoilsport. Adam wonders if this is one of those times when the 'blunt slap of reality' wasn't required. 

"Just...take your move, kid. Stop pissing on my parade."

Scrabble is a social game but it’s one which requires intellect and thought, a game which stimulates Adam’s logical brain and allows him to engage with other people in a way that appeals to him. This is Adam's engaging presence. This is his casual interaction. 

He places his letters down and smiles. The word he chooses looks wonderful on the board. 

"Zephyr? Jeez, are you kidding me, son?"

"It's a legitimate word."

He loves the letter Z. He can't explain why. He just loves the way the lines meet. He always preferred letters made up of straight lines, H and T above C and S. There's something special about Z, though. It's unusual, like he is. It has an interesting sound.

"Legitimate shmitimate."

Adam usually wins, always did, even when playing with both Harlan and his father. His dad used to pull him aside and tell him he had to submit sometimes; that a game isn’t fun if other players are never given a chance. Adam found this confusing because, to him, the purpose of any game or competition is to win but he'd gone along with it just to make his father happy,

He learned, as he got older, that sometimes it’s nice to give people a helping hand just to keep them interested.

Harlan forms a three letter double score word and smiles as if he’s won a million dollars.

The word is "dog". 

Adam can already see a better word on the board but he doesn't say it aloud. He learned pretty fast that people don't appreciate that kind of thing. 

“So, getting back to the matter at hand. You met a man. Was this a different man to the asshole who rearranged your face?"

"Yes. A different one. This one is interesting. I'm probably going to see him again."

"You are? For what?"

"Because I'm sexually attracted to him."

Harlan makes a choking sound to Adam's right.

"You're _what?_ "

For a second he gasps for breath. looks as though he might be about to bring up his tortilla. He composes himself before Adam needs to intervene, which is a good thing because he’s wearing his second favourite shirt and he’s still mourning the loss of his first. Bile can stain. No amount of washing gets a shirt completely clean. 

He can still feel Nigel's fingers on the front, right where the buttons should be, can still feel his whiskey-tinged breath telling him how sorry he is. 

"I became sexually excited when he touched my shoulder. I enjoy the way he looks. I’m thinking of pursuing a romantic relationship with him.” 

"Jesus, kid, you _'became sexually excited'_? What have I told you about blurting things out like that? You need to be less clinical about these things."

"What? You talk about sex all the time."

"I know, but there are ways of _saying_ things, Adam. Remember those lessons I tried to teach you about the natural flow of conversation?"

Adam doesn’t understand casual talking. He never has. Ever since he was a little boy he’s used the correct term for things. To him, a penis was a penis, never a cock or a dick, and sex was always just sex, never the 'f' word or any other such vulgar term. Slapping the monkey was animal cruelty, as was choking the chicken. It's only recently he's accepted the word 'kids' to describe children because the definition is a baby goat and children don't have horns.

("Oh, my son had invisible horns when he was born, the little demon.")

Adam has always been a very particular man, language-wise, and he doesn’t understand why that’s such a bad thing. What people refer to as 'unnatural' to him is simply articulation.

"Harlan, you asked if anything interesting happened this week. I told you. It shouldn’t matter what words I use. The meaning remains the same."

"You don't gotta be so formal all the time. That's all I'm saying."

"Ok, Harlan."

Adam doesn’t like it when people call him on his social awkwardness. There’s no need to draw attention to something he cannot help. He can’t help but feel aggrieved any time someone reminds him of the fact his speech may not be as natural as it could be. It’s just his way. Harlan knows that. He swears he’d never change him but it seems to Adam that these ‘lessons’ are just that: ways of making him assimilate. He’s heard the word ‘ableism’ before and he wonders if it applies to Harlan’s ill-conceived attempts at 'turning him into a real boy'.

('I'm just trying to help you fit in.')

Adam just wanted to talk. That's all. 

He places down the word 'lost' and he could be talking about himself. 

Harlan, it seems, senses the shift in Adam. As is customary, he tries his best to shift him back. It's appreciated. 

"So...Nigel? That's his name? He have a last name?"

"Yes, that's his name. I don't know his last name."

"Pity. I could've done a background check on him. There are websites for that kind of thing."

Adam shakes his head. He understands Nigel would not appreciate people snooping around. He's pretty sure he knows why, even if he chooses not to spell it out. 

"That's not necessary."

"You never know. I already ran a check on my woman. She could've been a black widow, something like that. Showed up a couple parking infringements, nothing more heinous. No dead husbands, at least."

Adam does wonder what would show up on Nigel's background check. Most likely nothing, he thinks. People like Nigel are often meticulous. Squeaky clean under scrutiny, the cop shows always say, but they always know better. 

"Could be a clever criminal," Adam suggests, and it's unclear who he means even to himself. "Maybe she just never got caught. Many mafia members have clean rap sheets. They get subordinates to take the blame so that they stay out of prison. It's a hierarchical structure."

"Sheesh," Harlan says. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. That was sarcasm, by the way."

"I know."

He's getting better with sarcasm. That's progress, at least. 

When Harlan shows no sign of making his move on the board Adam knows the game has taken the back-foot. It frustrates him that they won't get to finish but that's not entirely unusual. They've had games that have gone on for days at a time, when one became best of three and three became best of five. Adam hates to leave things unfinished. He's learning, though. 

"I gotta say I'm a little surprised. I always guessed that when you started talking about sex it would be with a girl, you know? You always got so flustered talking to Rosie down at the bakery."

Rosie. Twenty-seven years old. A Mets fan. Calls Adam 'cute' but once referred to him as a retard when she thought he couldn't hear her. He could. He doesn't like that word, not least because it doesn't refer to him in it's definition. 

He shakes his head.

"She speaks to me like I'm a child. She makes me lose focus."

"Yeah, well, I thought that was something else. Thought you might’ve made a move on her. That was the assumption, anyway."

"My dad used to always say, to assume is..."

"...to make an ass of you and me. I know. It’s fine. It’s cool. I don’t have an issue with you being into guys. I’m just…surprised, is all.”

"He likes space. We have some things in common. He has a favourite planet. He said he'd love to go to the space station because he could Lord over the world from up there."

Harlan rolls his eyes. Adam knows what he thinks. He thinks that Adam talks too much about one thing. He thinks people aren't interested. He thinks he overwhelms them. 

"You're _killing_ me."

"He asked if he could come up to my apartment to look at my telescope."

"Ever hear of innuendo, kid?"

"He wanted me to show him Saturn's ring."

The more he talks the more Harlan laughs. It frustrates Adam because he doesn't know what the joke is and it doesn't seem Harlan is going to let him in on it any time soon. He puts his letters down and places his hands on his lap, a surefire sign he's unhappy. Harlan struggles to compose himself, clearing his throat as if that alone would rid him of the laughter that's still threatening to spill through. 

The more he laughs, the more Adam's anger rises. He tethers it. Holds it inside. 

Harlan clears his throat, composes himself.

"So, um, what does he do? Your space cadet?"

"I'm not really sure."

it's as close to a lie as he's ever likely to get. Omitting the truth is not a lie. It's a censorship of information. Adam knows Nigel is involved in crime in some capacity but he doesn't truly know how. 

"He's not from the US."

"Canadian?"

"Romanian. He's from Bucharest."

"You're shitting me."

“I'm telling the truth. Pupils dilate when a person is being untruthful and a momentary shift to the left might occur as they access the cerebral function which controls imagination. Subtle changes in breathing might not be perceived by the naked eye but are quite often clear. They are biological tells. I'm breathing normally."

"It was a figure of speech, Adam. Remember those?"

It's hard to forget. He wishes there were no such thing.

"Sorry," he says, quietly. "It's just that I've been accused of a lot of lies lately. I'm very honest."

"I know. I know you don't lie. Not intentionally. Just hard to imagine you making conversation with someone from that far out. You've never even left the state. He sound like Dracula when he speaks?"

It's a strange question. How would he know? The only Dracula Adam has ever encountered was in a Hammer Horror movie his babysitter made him watch when he was nine years old and afraid of the dark, and it wasn't because he thought there were monsters but because for a few months out of that year they were renting an apartment where his bedroom had no windows. 

He couldn't see the stars. 

Nadia thought she could scare him in her cruel, juvenile way but he'd found the whole movie kind of bizarre and underwhelming. 

"I don't know if he sounds like Dracula because I've never heard Dracula speak. He curses a lot. He told me that was a cultural thing. I'm not familiar with Romanian culture so I couldn't be sure."

"And, does he know you're attracted to him? That's the real question."

"All questions are real, Harlan, but I'm not sure. He showed up at the park because he was hoping to see me. I understand this to mean he's considering me in a non-platonic way. He was at my apartment until 4am. I also believe this is what people do when they are interested in courting a relationship."

"Or, a one night stand."

"He came to find me again. That indicates more than a one time thing. Plus, we didn't have sexual relations so it doesn't fit the traditional criteria of a one night stand. He's coming to the observatory to watch the eclipse with me. He says he's going to buy a book and read up on it before the weekend."

" _Definitely_ got it bad."

The thought pleases Adam. He's used to being coveted. By everyday standards he is considered attractive. The girls in his last job used to tell him he was the cutest guy in the office and Mary, from the Dinosaur exhibit, calls him 'handsome' as if it's his given name. He's never quite versed himself in reading the subtleties of flirtation but he has it on good authority that women do it wherever he goes. Then they sense something 'off ' about him and leave.

Harlan looks at him sincerely now, an imploring look that gathers Adam's attention because he understands it to mean something serious. 

"Adam, would you do me a favour?"

"I don't know. I can't agree to something if I don't know what it entails."

"Just...be careful, alright? I don't want you getting hurt. I've met a few Eastern Europeans in my time. They're not like you and me, that's for sure. Especially the ones living in New York."

Nigel is not like any man or woman Adam has ever met. He sensed something 'off', witnessed it firsthand - but, he didn't leave. 

"You don't have to worry about me, Harlan. I can take care of myself."

"I promised your dad..."

"I know. But, I'm not a little boy any more. I've been a legal adult for almost nine years. I'll be thirty years old in April."

"That doesn't mean I can't worry about you. I love you like you're my own son. You already got beat up once this week. I don't want you getting in with people who are going to hurt you like that."

"It won't happen again. Nigel has already taken care of it."

There it is. He says it before he thinks bad immediately feels like he wants to take it back. He wasn't supposed to say anything at all. 

Harlan looks like his father used to look when Adam said something wrong. 

"You told me you didn't know the guy who did it. That's why you didn't go to the cops."

"I _didn't_ know him, but, _Nigel_ did. He said the guy has mental problems and issues with self-control. He probably saw me as a threat. That's why he did this to me."

"A threat, Adam? You?"

"People with mental problems see threat where there isn't one. Paranoia is a symptom of - "

" - I get it, Adam. Okay."

"Okay."

Adam senses Harlan is tired of his pedantics. It comes from stress, he knows. Stress about Adam. Stress about how he is going to manage now his Dad is gone. Stress makes Harlan impatient. It just makes Adam scared. 

"All I can say is I'm not _normally_ an advocate for violence but I hope that asshole got what was coming to him. Nobody gets to lay a hand on you. Adam. You understand?"

"Yes."

"I mean it. Nobody."

It's almost 8 o'clock. This is when Adam usually starts his night-time routine. He's not being rude when he looks at his watch, nor is he showing impatience. He's just making sure he's on schedule. 

He needs to get back into his safe zone. 

Perhaps Harlan senses that.

"You wanna finish up later?" he asks. "I need to make a move. I got a delivery to make in Westchester. You need a ride somewhere? It's pretty dark out."

"No, thank you. I need to do some preparation for my paper."

"Sure thing. You can give me a call if you need anything, alright? Even if I say I'm busy, I'm not too busy for that. I'm never too busy for that."

"Alright."

"I mean it, kid. If you ever need anything..."

Adam smiles. Nods his head. He knows there's a deeper meaning here somewhere. He just can't find what it is right now. He doesn't jerk or flinch when Harlan touches him. He's used to that contact. This man is the only constant in Adam's life right now, and he appreciates that. He gets the impression everything is about to change. 

He's never been good with that.


End file.
